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No. 3 Gallagher Dallara/Chevrolet – Scott McLaughlin
Start: 2nd
Finish: 7th
Point Standings: 7th (-98 pts)
Race Rundown: Scott McLaughlin and the No. 3 Gallagher Chevrolet team qualified second and came home with a seventh-place finish in Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, the first time the race has been contested on the streets of downtown since 1991. One of the best qualifiers in Team Penske history, McLaughlin placed his Chevrolet on the outside of the front row to start the 100-lap event. After electing to start the race on the Firestone alternate, guayule tires, McLaughlin lost a handful of spots over the opening stint as the softer compound tires wore quickly on the rough street circuit. Once the Gallagher crew applied the primary tires on the team’s first pit stop of the day, McLaughlin rebounded back into the top five before being contacted by the No. 28 of Romain Grosjean as Grosjean was leaving pit road on Lap 67. While the contact ruined a chance for a top-five finish, McLaughlin drove a determined race to the checkered flag to pick up a solid, seventh-place finish.
McLaughlin’s Thoughts: “The incident with Grosjean basically destroyed our day. Getting into turn 1 – pit exit is a little bit awkward, but he just drove straight for the apex. I was already committed, braking as deep as I could, and he just drove straight to the apex. I had nowhere to go. It’s the duty of all of us to get out of that area cleanly and I don’t think he cared where I was and turned across my nose. It is what it is. That Gallagher Chevy was fast. We hammered through those last few restarts. I think we started 12th and came through to seventh. It was definitely a reasonable recovery but overall, pretty gutted with the day.”
