Scott McLaughlin celebrates with the Team Penske crew after ending a 36-race winless streak at Laguna Seca. Photo: INDYCAR.com
Scott McLaughlin’s 36-race winless streak is over, and it ended about as emphatically as a streak can end: pole position, 87 of 95 laps led, and a margin over Kyle Kirkwood that never dipped below a second across the final quarter of the race. Team Penske’s No. 3 Chevrolet was so dominant at the Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey that the biggest decision of McLaughlin’s afternoon was which of three identical pit stops to make.
That’s the version of Sunday at Laguna Seca that fits neatly into a headline. The more interesting version is what happened everywhere else on the grid, because this was a season finale that settled almost nothing about the championship and quite a lot about where several careers go from here.
The tire gamble that almost mattered
Kirkwood spent his final stint on Firestone’s faster, softer alternate tire, closing McLaughlin’s lead from nearly four seconds down to 1.2 seconds by lap 72 — the kind of pace swing that usually forces a leader into a defensive scramble. It didn’t happen here, because McLaughlin was running the more durable primary tire and simply had more grip left when it counted. Kirkwood was candid about the calculation afterward: chasing a race win on a tire that would fall off a cliff in the final ten laps wasn’t worth risking a runner-up championship finish he’d already all but banked.
“We just played it super clean, super methodical,” Kirkwood said. “We knew who we were fighting, and that was for the championship, mostly. So, we played it safe there. Second place is best of the rest.”
It’s the same math that turns plenty of INDYCAR road-course finales conservative once a title or a career-best points finish is mathematically worth more than a trophy. Kirkwood’s second place locked in his best championship result yet and capped a strong second half of the season that included a breakthrough win in Washington, D.C.
A coronation, not a contest
That runner-up finish for Kirkwood didn’t change the outcome at the top, because Alex Palou’s championship was already settled. Palou wrapped his fifth INDYCAR title in six seasons the weekend before at Milwaukee, and his eighth-place drive at Laguna Seca had all the urgency of a lap of honor — a quiet coda to a season Chip Ganassi Racing dominated from the front office down.
The bigger number belongs to the team, not just the driver: a fourth consecutive teams’ championship, tying the series record, on the strength of an organization that has now won 18 titles overall. That kind of run deserves more context than a single race report can give it.
The real story was two garages down
The most consequential storyline at Laguna Seca wasn’t really about the race itself, though — it was about who was driving in it. Christian Lundgaard finished sixth in what amounted to his farewell appearance for Arrow McLaren. The team decided months ago not to re-sign him for 2027, opting instead to build a three-car lineup entirely around Indianapolis 500 winners.
One of those replacements, Felix Rosenqvist, finished fourth for Meyer Shank on Sunday — about 11 seconds and two positions ahead of the man he’s about to replace. Rosenqvist won this May’s Indianapolis 500 as part of a Honda-powered season that also delivered the manufacturer’s 12th INDYCAR title, and that resume is precisely why Arrow McLaren wanted him in the first place. It’s a small sample to judge a lineup swap on, but symbolism doesn’t need a large sample to sting.
A smaller, sweeter story in third place
Alexander Rossi’s third-place finish was Ed Carpenter Racing’s best result of the season on a road or street course, a discipline that had been a genuine problem all year — the team’s previous high point was a sixth for Rossi in June at Road America. It’s a notable swing for an outfit that hasn’t lacked for speed on ovals, where Christian Rasmussen won at Milwaukee last August and finished third at World Wide Technology Raceway this year. One podium doesn’t erase a season-long trend, but it’s the first real evidence ECR found something in the car rather than just catching a strategy break.
There’s an ironic footnote in the rookie standings, too. Dennis Hauger won Rookie of the Year despite finishing 25th and last, a direct result of getting collected by Sting Ray Robb’s Juncos Hollinger Racing entry into Turn 6 on the opening lap. Hauger’s season-long points held up over Mick Schumacher by just 15, a margin thin enough that a single first-lap incident nearly cost him a title he otherwise wasn’t seriously threatened for.
What to watch next
None of this changes the order of finish. McLaughlin won, Kirkwood was best of the rest, and Palou’s season was decided weeks before he ever turned a wheel at Laguna Seca. But finales are where teams make the calls that define the following year, and this one produced at least three worth tracking into 2027: whether Kirkwood’s title math finally catches up to Ganassi, whether Arrow McLaren’s Indy-500-heavy gamble pays off, and whether ECR actually fixed its road-course problem or just got lucky once. The 2027 season opens March 7 on the streets of St. Petersburg, and every one of those storylines will still be live.
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