By David Morgan, Associate Editor
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Scott McLaughlin is back in familiar territory at Barber Motorsports Park.
The driver of the No. 3 Team Penske Chevrolet topped the board in the opening practice for this weekend’s Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix with a a lap of one minute, 7.384 seconds around the 2.3-mile, 17-turn road course.
McLaughlin has won twice at the track in five starts at the track, with back-to-back victories in 2023 and 2024, along with a podium finish last season and a sixth-place finish in 2022.
“I love this track cause it’s just so fast, high commitment, you’ve just really got to ship it and it’s exactly what I like,” Mclaughlin said earlier in the day of his excitement coming into the weekend at a track he has been successful at.
His former teammate at Team Penske and current Andretti Global driver Will Power gave McLaughlin a nod after the session noting his speed he always seems to have at Barber.
“He’s very good around here. The Penske cars are really good around here,” said Power. “I was really quick last year. I expected them to be at the front. I know, yeah, Scott had a bad race at Arlington. He’ll definitely be looking to get back some points this weekend.”
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Current NTT IndyCar Series points leader Kyle Kirkwood timed in second quickest, followed by Pato O’Ward, Christian Lundgaard, and David Malukas.
“I’ve always loved this place. This was my first-ever INDYCAR test back in ’21. I’ve had some good results. Also had some less good ones,” said Lundgaard.
“I think it’s trending in the right direction looking at the last couple years. It’s nice to obviously start the weekend kind of good off the trucks.
“I didn’t really think that pace was in the car throughout our entire primary run. Pretty positively surprised, I would say.”
The remainder of the top-10 went to Josef Newgarden, Alex Palou, Rinus VeeKay, Marcus Armstrong, and Power.
“Not bad, yeah. Pretty good balance. Not quite fast enough,” said Power. “I got a teammate that’s very quick. Look closely at his setup. Yeah, found some good stuff, though. We’ll have to regroup overnight and understand what we want to do before qualifying.
“The car has a good balance. It feels good. That’s tough when you have a good balance, you’re not quite on the pace. Need to find some time.”
Power added that all three Andretti cars took different paths during practice to test differing setup methodologies and would confer with each other overnight to determine the right path forward for the remainder of the weekend.
“I think we found some good stuff today. We all ran different stuff, so it was quite a test. We got to kind of pick and choose what is good from those pieces from each car,” Power said.
“Yeah, it’s a very tight qualifying session around this track ’cause everyone has been here for so many years, it’s a short track, and as you can see the times are stacked. A 10th moves you a lot of spots. Definitely important to execute well for us.
“You got to pick the right philosophy. It’s tough. You don’t want to be out of the window. You could just go to a teammate’s setup completely because he’s fast. That doesn’t always work out. We could work on what we’ve got, which is also a good balance.
“We’ll go back and review everything. You’re a lot smarter once you look at data, video, analyze the sectors, so on, then we’ll make a decision.”
McLaughlin also led the 40-minute all-cars session to start practice along with being fastest in his group, where he laid down the fast lap of the day. Lundgaard led the other group in running.
Practice was slowed just once for a mechanical issue involving the No. 20 ECR Chevrolet of Alexander Rossi in the all-cars session. He was able to get pulled back to pit road and rejoined practice a short time later.
With Friday’s lone practice session complete, teams will work overnight to get their cars dialed in for Saturday’s on track activity, which will include another practice session at 11:00 am ET, leading into qualifying at 2:30 pm ET. Both sessions will be televised on FOX Sports 1.
The Children’s of Alabama Indy Grand Prix is scheduled for 1:00 pm ET Sunday on FOX.
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