McLaughlin credits engineers, Chevy with first IndyCar pole

Three-time Supercars champion McLaughlin lapped the 1.8-mile St. Petersburg course 0.1237sec faster than teammate Will Power to snatch pole as he begins his sophomore season in IndyCar.

With 2021 race engineer Jonathan Diuguid having moved across to the Porsche Penske LMDh sportscar project, and the IndyCar branch of the legendary team having contracted down to three cars, McLaughlin’s car is now being engineered by Ben Bretzman, long-time partner for the now-departed Simon Pagenaud.

McLaughlin told media: “It's something that you know you can do, but sometimes – obviously in Australia we had a lot of success with poles and wins and all that sort of stuff and you know you can do it, but you have a hard year like '21 where it just didn't click and there was a few things where you just didn't put it together, but you know the speed is there. It's all about taking pressure off yourself and just focusing on what you need to do, and that's what we did today.

“Really working well with my new engineer, Ben Bretzman, who's been fantastic for me. Jonathan Diuguid, who I used to work with, he basically helped me to this moment. He was the one engineer I worked with to this point, and Ben has picked me up and just polished me off a little bit there. I feel good.”

McLaughlin said that he had “really worked hard over the off-season to make sure I was ready to go. It is important, and I'm right there, and it's important that I push these guys [Will Power and Josef Newgarden who qualified second and ninth respectively today] because it's only going to make them better and it's only going to make me better, as well, as a team…

“We worked very hard on this track with the simulator, and thankfully the simulator has been fantastic for that, and getting me to a great baseline setup that I've really only touched a little bit here and there, just tweaking it trying to figure out what was right.

“I know what I'm driving out there and I'm able to just punch out the laps and find the time within myself, which is exactly what I did in that Q3 lap. I put together a lap that I had worked on the whole session and didn't quite get it right. I looked at a bit of Will's data, looked at a bit of Josef's and just put it together. Didn't panic.

“And I guess experience – you can't buy experience. I'm certainly feeling really comfortable now in the series and in the car.”

McLaughlin also praised Chevrolet, who claimed three of the top four qualifying positions, for improving its engine’s driveability out of slow turns.

“Yeah, I think it's been an absolutely massive step forward Chevy is taking with our drivability in particular, and it's a lot of hard work from them and working with all the teams. So I certainly feel a lot better, and definitely some of the microsectors that we were slower in over the last couple of years were really good, and the drivability there is a lot nicer.

“To be honest, it's starting to come into my liking a little bit – I'm not going to into too much detail because there's a Honda guy sitting next to me [Romain Grosjean], but I feel a lot better, and certainly, I think, Will would say the same.”