The former Supercars ace started off his second season in the IndyCar Series with a pole and victory at St. Petersburg, but today’s performance around the 2.238-mile track in Lexington, OH. was his strongest qualifying result on a road course. He finished the session 0.1324sec adrift of IndyCar’s ninth different pole-winner in nine races, Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet.
“We felt like we’ve had reasonable pace, and we've been wanting to sort of build on that bit by bit,” said McLaughlin, “and to finally sort of nail it in qualifying and get through to the Fast Six and keep going was nice. Then to compete for pole and be as close as we were to Pato was fun.
