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SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN No. 3 GALLAGHER CHEVROLET
START: 3RD
FINISH: 8TH
POINTS: 7TH (-197)
RACE RUNDOWN: Scott McLaughlin and the No. 3 Gallagher Chevrolet team rolled the dice on strategy to try and grab their first win of the season, but they did not catch a timely caution period needed and scored an eighth-place finish in Sunday’s Ontario Honda Dealers INDY at Markham. A strong qualifying effort saw McLaughlin start the 90-lap race from the third position, his sixth, top five start of the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season. Early in the race, McLaughlin and three others formed a four-car breakaway at the front of the field that grew to over six seconds. He and his Gallagher crew elected to stick to a two pit stop strategy, making their way down pit lane on Lap 28 to switch to the Firestone alternate tire. As different fuel strategies played out, McLaughlin would cycle in and out of the top five as he made his final pit stop of the day on Lap 56 from the fifth position. Knowing this was slightly outside of their fuel window, McLaughlin and race strategist Tim Cindric felt that there would be more caution laps on a day when the racing action was interrupted on several occasions. Unfortunately, only one short caution period followed their final pit stop and McLaughlin was forced into heavy fuel save mode over the final 10 laps of the race, losing several positions to take the checkered flag in the eighth position.
MCLAUGHLIN’S THOUGHTS: “Tough old race. We made a call to save fuel to the end, but the deficit was too much. If we had one more yellow. Going off the trends of the race, we thought there might have been one more yellow. Unfortunately, there wasn’t. Frustrated. An eighth is OK in the Gallagher Chevy, but we could have been on the podium.”
