McLaughlin cruises to win at Laguna Seca on a weekend when the drama was secondary.

Over the last several years, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca has belonged to Alex Palou. After all, he won three of the previous four IndyCar races at the track. On Sunday, however, it was Scott McLaughlin who set the pace.

The driver of the no 3 Team Penske Chevrolet led 87 of the 95 laps that made up the Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey to win the NTT IndyCar series finale by a comfortable margin.

“My goal was to keep it at two seconds the whole time,” McLaughlin says of the gap he maintained between his car and the second place contender throughout much of the afternoon.

Sunday’s contest was uneventful, but not without drama. Alex Palou, driver of the no. 10 Ganassi Racing Honda had wrapped up the season championship last week at Milwaukee and coasted to an eighth place finish on the day. McLaughlin outlasted Kyle Kirkwood in the no. 27 Andretti Honda, who eventually closed to within 1.3 seconds of the leader, and no. 20 Eric Carpenter Racing Chevrolet driver Alexander Rossi.

For McLaughlin, the win marked his first since 2024, and he celebrated in style–or tried. His attempt to spin doughnuts on the front stretch after the race generated tire smoke, but not much else. 

“I've been waiting six years to do that,” McLaughlin says. “My initial one I wanted to park it against the fence. I was too close to the wall when the smoke cleared. I was doing donuts, that's all I can ask for.”

Joining him in smoking up the front stretch following the race was Alex Palou, celebrating his fifth IndyCar championship. The Spanish driver became the second driver to earn three consecutive titles, the previous being Sebastian Bourdais from 2004-2007. He is now also the youngest driver to claim five IndyCar championships.

“Yeah, I like it,” Palau says of the ring designating him as the 2026 IndyCar points leader. As for a race in which he started second, but had to battle his way back into the top 10, he was less than happy with tire strategy (IndyCar requires teams to use both hard and soft–alternates–during the race, each with different wear and pace profiles). 

“We didn't make the right decision in the race,” he explains. “We started on used alternates and we kind of survived, but then we went on another used alternates. We killed ourselves there.”

But for Palou, the experimentation didn’t matter. In wrapping up his fifth title, he recorded more wins, pole positions, top five finishes and laps than any of his rivals–among other categories. Kirkwood, however, started the day third in a fight for second in the championship with no. 7 Arrow McLaren driver Christian Lundgaard and his teammate, Pato O’Ward in the no. 5.

Even here there was little drama. Kirkwood started from the sixth spot and landed behind the leader before lap 20 when Palou pitted. He followed McLaughlin for the remainder of the race, shaving tenths off of the winner’s lead toward the end until betrayed by tire strategy.

“We played it a little bit safer than I might have hoped for the last race of the season, but we had to for the championship,” Kirkwood explains. “The number one goal was to make the tires last. That's what we did.”

Lundgaard finished seventh, behind Felix Rosenqvist in the no. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda and David Malukas’ no. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet. O’Ward struggled on the day, clinging to 11th.

There was another title on the line, that of Rookie of the Year. It went to Dennis Hauger, despite the no. 19 Dale Coyne Racing Honda driver being punted into the wall barely a half a lap into the race by no. 77 Juncos Hollinger Racing pilot Sting Ray Robb. It was the only caution on the day.

Hauger had built up enough of a points cushion on Rahal Letterman Lanigan driver Mick Schumacher to survive the incident.

“I was kind of looking forward to today,” he says. “Obviously I didn't get that opportunity, getting taken out on lap one. It's obviously always annoying when you're fighting for something and you can't really do anything about it. You just have to sit and watch. Luckily we had a buffer going into this weekend that helped us a lot.”

As for McLaughlin, he had two more reasons to celebrate his eighth IndyCar win. For one, it was the first experienced by his young daughter. But in 2026, McLaughlin led the season’s first lap in March on the streets of St. Petersburg, as well as the last on a warm Sunday afternoon at Laguna Seca.

“Sweet,” was his conclusion.