Photo credit: Penske Entertainment/James Black
Scott McLaughlin took his first win of the season Sunday, leading the last 18 laps to take the checkers at the Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park. Polesitter Romain Grosjean led 47 laps, but used up all his push to pass with 20 laps still remaining, and after a close battle coming out of their final pit stops the Andretti driver ran wide and the Penske car took full advantage. McLaughlin’s teammate Will Power closed up on Grosjean in the final laps but settled for third place, still his best finish of the season. Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou finished fourth and fifth, closing right up on points leader Marcus Ericsson, who only managed a tenth-place finish.
The start featured a couple of particularly hair-raising laps, with Grosjean, O’Ward, and Palou coming close to contact, but ultimately the opening laps were mostly without incident; Felix Rosenqvist and Josef Newgarden came together, with Rosenqvist’s McLaren falling to the back of the field; he would recover to finish ninth, while Newgarden would continue to struggle and finished 15th.
Beyond the start, the main drama early on was strategic: the Penske cars were among a handful of cars to pit early for a three-stop race, with McLaughlin and Power coming in on lap 15 while Grosjean and Palou came in on lap 30. The three-stoppers began coming in on lap 36, right before Sting Ray Robb’s car came to a stop on lap 38. The rest of the alternate-strategy cars came in before the race’s only yellow flew on lap 39.
With the strategies effectively reset, the race resumed on lap 43 with Grosjean leading McLaughlin, O’Ward, Palou, and Christian Lundgaard; Lundgaard would move up a position on the restart, but ultimately finished sixth, still a great result for an otherwise struggling Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team. Grosjean stretched out to a two-second lead on McLaughlin before coming in on lap 60; McLaughlin came in three laps later, just ahead of Grosjean, but on warmed-up tires the polesitter reeled him in, barging past coming out of the final turn to start lap 65.
As the pit stop cycle completed on lap 67, Grosjean led McLaughlin, but had already depleted his entire push to pass reserve. He was all but a sitting duck for McLaughlin, who pounced when Grosjean ran wide at turn five on lap 72 and took the lead for good. Will Power–who started down in 11th but worked his way up to lead three laps as everyone cycled through their final stops–closed to within less than a second with three laps left, but couldn’t muster enough extra reserve to take the position.
The result has tightened up the points heading to Indianapolis. Defending Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson still leads the points, but by just three over Pato O’Ward, nine points over Alex Palou–who, like Ericsson, has yet to finish outside the top ten this season–while McLaughlin vaults to fourth in points with the win and Grosjean, having gone from crashing out of the top two in consecutive races to finishing second in consecutive races, is fifth in the standings.
