By David Morgan, Associate Editor
NEWTON, Iowa – Scott McLaughlin has been a roll all weekend in Iowa.
Fastest in practice? Check.
A pole and another front row start? Check.
Now he can add an NTT IndyCar Series oval win to his resume after winning Saturday night’s Hy-Vee Homefront 250 at Iowa Speedway over Pato O’Ward.
“Hell yeah. Give me a beer!” McLaughlin exclaimed after climbing from his car in victory.
“The XPEL Chevy was unreal. What got it done tonight was the pit stops, the team. Got me out in front of Herta there and we just sort of showed our pace. That’s a big deal today, man. I’ve been working on that for a couple of years. It takes a lot of hard work…
“I’m really stoked for this whole team. Really proud of this whole team at Penske. We’ve got another race tomorrow and we start from pole, so let’s go!
McLaughlin ascended to the lead on Lap 87 over polesitter Colton Herta thanks to a quick pit stop from his crew and never looked back, leading the final 164 laps as he kept his competitors at bay through both green flag running and four different restarts.
With the performance on Saturday night, McLaughlin goes into Sunday’s second race of the Iowa doubleheader as the polesitter, looking for a clean sweep of the weekend and hopefully many more oval wins in the future.
“I never was going to call myself an IndyCar driver until I won on an oval, so I’m going to call myself an IndyCar driver now if you don’t mind.
“Hopefully the floodgates open. We bloody need them to because we’re a fair way behind in the championship. We’ll see how we go.”
Finishing 0.4814 seconds in arears of McLaughlin, O’Ward moved forward from sixth place on the start to the runner-up position, but lamented the inability to pass on the repaved Iowa surface that kept him from being able to take a swing at McLaughlin for the lead and the win late.
“My car had more. I was super, super happy with it,” O’Ward said. “All race, you just can’t frickin’ do anything with no two lanes. Like it’s just a one lane race track. If you try anything, you’re probably going to end up in the wall, so not worth to risk it.
“We’re just making our moves in the pits. The guys did a phenomenal job. Awesome pit stops. I kept it clean on the track really. The guys gave me the opportunity to be on the podium today, so super stoked. Arrow McLaren. Let’s go!”
Much like McLaughlin, O’Ward remains confident going into Sunday that if the circumstances play out in his favor, he has a shot to bring home the win.
“I have the car. I have the team to do it,” O’Ward explained. “I just don’t know if we have the track position to really…we need that door to open to get in front of everybody or just have an opportunity on a restart or something. That’s where we can get it done.
“The car is more than capable and I have some of the best guys in the pits, so pumped for tomorrow.”
Six-time Iowa winner Josef Newgarden rounded out the podium, having moved up from 22nd place on the start to break into the top-three in the closing laps of the race.
“Tough night,” Newgarden said. “I think for us on the 2 car, we ran out of time and real estate, so… I wish we had maybe one more fuel stint, would have helped us, at least if you’re looking at tonight specifically and the setup.
“It was a great recovery by the team. My goodness, they were really good in the pits, like really, really good. If Pato’s guys were good, mine must have been double as good. I made up probably 80% of my position in the pits tonight.
“They’ve been good all year. Tonight they really brought it and we needed it. You can’t start 22nd, especially this year. If it was last year, I would have been okay starting 22nd. This was like almost the kiss of death this year to start that far back. That was the tough part for us.
“Tomorrow we’re a little bit higher. I’m excited about that. I think we start 14th tomorrow. Not great by any means, but better than what tonight was.”
Scott Dixon finished the day in fourth, followed by Rinus VeeKay, Santino Ferrucci, Kyle Kirkwood, Alexander Rossi, Marcus Ericsson, and Marcus Armstrong to round out the top-10.
Herta’s Headache
After leading the opening 86 laps of the race, Colton Herta finished in 11th, having recovered from being trapped a lap down when the caution flag flew shortly after making a green flag pit stop on Lap 174.
Falling as far back as 19th place as a result, Herta just didn’t have the track position to recover for the rest of the race and had to settle for a finish outside the top-10 on what started as a very promising day.
Though he didn’t come away with the finish he would have liked to have had, Herta still delivered some mind-boggling car control as he battled back in the pack late in the race when his No. 26 Andretti Global Honda kicked sideways in Turn 3 on Lap 226.
Herta has been known for some of these outstanding saves and Saturday night was just another edition to add to the resume.
Ferrucci’s Fortitude
Ferrucci rebounded from a penalty on Lap 39 for a restart violation, making some of the most aggressive moves out of anyone on track to make up for the lost ground as one of the few to test the high line late in the race.
“It’s been a day of emotions, to be honest,” Ferrucci said. “The highest of highs in qualifying to a mistake having to start 20th. Great restarts, great starts. Obviously, I guess I got out of line. I think there was a delay issue between when the leader was going and the light boards were turning on, so obviously a drive through.
“Tried to pit the first time. Missed it because my foot hit the floor. Didn’t want to just go straight through the track, then they gave me a stop-and-go for that. That was like adding insult to injury. And then I was in my head a little bit, not going to lie.
“Larry [Foyt] just came on the radio basically being a team owner and telling me to shut up and drive. And that’s exactly what I did.
“We got our Sexton Properties Chevrolet up into the top-six. Really wanted the top-five there at the end, but VeeKay just kind of ran us high and it wasn’t worth throwing away what turned back into a great day for us.”
Cautions, cautions, cautions.
The race was slowed by caution on six different occasions, with the most notable cautions coming on the opening lap when David Malukas spun in Turn 2 collecting three other cars in the process.
Along with Malukas, the two Juncos Hollinger cars of Romain Grosjean and Agustin Canapino, as well as the Rahal Letterman Lanigan machine of Christian Lundgaard were swept up in the crash after Malukas clipped the apron and his No. 66 Meyer Shank Racing Honda was sent sliding.
“I made a rookie mistake,” Malukas said. “I had to check up on the start and didn’t anticipate it well, so I got on the curb and spun. We had a good start to the weekend and we were looking forward to a good race.”
The other major incident involved current IndyCar Series points leader Alex Palou when he uncharacteristically spun off Turn 4 on Lap 176, making contact with the outside wall on the frontstretch and then again in Turn 1.
With a 23rd place finish, Palou’s points lead now falls to 37 points over O’Ward heading into the second race of the doubleheader on Sunday.
“I just lost it out of [Turn] 4,” Palou said. “Driver mistake. There is no reason why I had to push there. Just trying to recover from another driver mistake I had in the pits. Unacceptable. Very sorry for the 10 car. The car was good, just it wasn’t our day.”
Hy-Vee Homefront 250 Race Results
| Pos | SP | Car | Driver | C/E/T | Lap | Laps Down | Time Down |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | McLaughlin, Scott | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | –.—- |
| 2 | 6 | 5 | O’Ward, Pato | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 0.4814 |
| 3 | 22 | 2 | Newgarden, Josef | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 1.5174 |
| 4 | 5 | 9 | Dixon, Scott | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 5.0041 |
| 5 | 13 | 21 | VeeKay, Rinus | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 6.5656 |
| 6 | 8 | 14 | Ferrucci, Santino | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 7.4575 |
| 7 | 19 | 27 | Kirkwood, Kyle | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 8.4200 |
| 8 | 7 | 7 | Rossi, Alexander | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 9.3425 |
| 9 | 10 | 28 | Ericsson, Marcus | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 10.3770 |
| 10 | 9 | 11 | Armstrong, Marcus | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 11.4006 |
| 11 | 1 | 26 | Herta, Colton | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 11.8114 |
| 12 | 15 | 6 | Siegel, Nolan (R) | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 12.1279 |
| 13 | 11 | 60 | Rosenqvist, Felix | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 12.4651 |
| 14 | 27 | 4 | Simpson, Kyffin (R) | D/H/F | 250 | 0 | 13.5048 |
| 15 | 24 | 41 | Robb, Sting Ray | D/C/F | 250 | 0 | 14.0242 |
| 16 | 21 | 15 | Rahal, Graham | D/H/F | 249 | 1 | – |
| 17 | 26 | 51 | Legge, Katherine | D/H/F | 249 | 1 | – |
| 18 | 4 | 12 | Power, Will | D/C/F | 241 | 9 | – |
| 19 | 17 | 30 | Fittipaldi, Pietro | D/H/F | 228 | 22 | – |
| 20 | 25 | 20 | Carpenter, Ed | D/C/F | 228 | 22 | – |
| 21 | 12 | 8 | Lundqvist, Linus (R) | D/H/F | 209 | 41 | – |
| 22 | 23 | 45 | Lundgaard, Christian | D/H/F | 178 | 72 | – |
| 23 | 3 | 10 | Palou, Alex | D/H/F | 175 | 75 | – |
| 24 | 20 | 77 | Grosjean, Romain | D/C/F | 48 | 202 | – |
| 25 | 18 | 18 | Harvey, Jack | D/H/F | 28 | 222 | – |
| 26 | 14 | 66 | Malukas, David | D/H/F | 0 | 250 | – |
| 27 | 16 | 78 | Canapino, Agustin | D/C/F | 0 | 250 | – |
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