Team Penske’s top IndyCar Series performer feared the worst.
Scott McLaughlin, on his way to the first of three victories in 2024, thought he witnessed a grave injury take place as he raced toward one of the walkover bridges at Barber Motorsports Park. To his alarm and amazement, a fan fell hard and crashed down next to the racing surface,
“I was in the zone,” McLaughlin told ESPN. “But I was like, ‘What, someone’s fallen off the bridge?’ So I radioed in and said it again. ‘Someone’s fallen off the bridge.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, s—. I hope everyone’s all right.'”
The person wasn’t moving, which only added to the New Zealander’s concerns. A radio response from the Penske team brought calm to the situation, and a few laughs.
“Everyone thought it was an actual person, and because I’m a typical race driver, leading the race of course, I got pissed because it was going to bring out a caution and it’s gonna screw us,” McLaughlin said. “And then they said it was actually a mannequin that fell down, and realizing it was fake was even funnier.”
As told by its drivers, the 2024 IndyCar season was filled with an abundance of unforgettable (and forgettable) moments like a mannequin breaking free of from its tether beneath a bridge and bringing out a caution in the middle of a professional motor race. Separate from their own achievements, what were the standout moments — positive, negative, or downright silly — that some of IndyCar’s best will remember first about the most recent season.
“I would say that the biggest, the most shocking moment was the push-to-pass thing,” 2024 champion Álex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing said of the early-season incident where the team owned by series owner Roger Penske was caught making illegal use of extra horsepower when it was not available to other teams. “It was pretty wild.”
Caught and penalized for the infraction at the season opener where Penske’s Josef Newgarden won with ease and McLaughlin placed second, the series fined Penske and stripped Newgarden and McLaughlin of their points for the first race. Credited with fourth after the Penske drivers were deleted from the results, Palou’s path toward his third IndyCar championship in four years was eased.
Citing another Penske gaffe at the midseason — where Penske’s Will Power took out McLaughlin, and once more at the penultimate race when Palou was struck by electrical gremlins and Power was ready to capitalize on the misfortune before throwing it away with a solo spin — the Spaniard was the recipient of championship help from his arch rivals on multiple occasions.
“And then obviously I would say also the moment where Power and McLaughlin got together in Toronto,” Palou said. “Without that crash, that would have helped both Power and McLaughlin a lot for the championship, and I was able to escape from that. And that was the best when [Power] spun. Oh, my goodness. That was the best, absolutely.”
Conor Daly went into the year with a single race on his calendar. The IndyCar veteran was only meant to do the Indianapolis 500 with Dreyer & Reinbold with Cusick Motorsports, but in a season of constant driver changes, the son of former Formula 1 and IndyCar racer Derek Daly was drafted into Dale Coyne Racing and Juncos Hollinger Racing to fill desperate needs.
He was one of more than 20 drivers to get hired for part-time seats or fired from their full-time roles before the final race.
“The most staggering thing to me is just how volatile seats became,” said Indiana’s Daly, who was cut halfway through 2023 by Ed Carpenter Racing and was recently signed for the entirety of 2025 by Juncos Hollinger. “I think seeing drivers just getting tossed out in the last 18 months has been crazy. It shouldn’t be how the sport is, but wow, you almost went into a weekend thinking, ‘Well, if someone has a bad day, who’s next?’
“That was something we don’t really see in many other places, except for our championship. There’s a little bit of that in Formula 1, obviously, and normally in the Red Bull camp, but, in NASCAR, I don’t really see that as much. And so I felt like that was extremely unique.”
Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood, a double race winner in 2023 and seventh-place finisher in the latest championship, is fond of the resurgence in short- and medium-size oval tracks, which featured the introduction of IndyCar’s new hybrid engines.
“It was very strong,” the Floridian said. “It was our best Gateway race that we’ve seen. I thought Milwaukee was a lot of fun. Nashville, everybody thought was going to be a snoozer, and it wasn’t. It was the most oval race I’ve ever been on. Granted, it was also where I’ve had the best car. I’ve learned in my short career that you tend to hate ovals when s—‘s not going right, and you absolutely love ovals when stuff does go right.
“And I don’t think the hybrid ruined racing. Once we actually looked back, it turned out to be quite a positive thing. It was a refreshing reminder that it is actually a good thing for our sport. And it was awesome with minimal failures, too.”
Daly concurred.
“I thought the race at Nashville was really encouraging,” he said, referencing the oval that made its return to the schedule after a 15-year absence. “It reminded me of older-school IndyCar oval racing. Now, everyone wants to be new school and go to new places, but some of our best races this year were going to back the Milwaukee Mile, going to the Nashville Speedway. I thought that was really cool. I’m gonna fight until we get 10 ovals and 10 road and street courses on the schedule because there was something about the ovals that was really invigorating and exciting.”
Kirkwood’s Andretti teammate, 2022 Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson, heads into his seventh year as an IndyCar driver filled with encouragement for all the series has coming, including a new broadcast partnership with FOX that will place every race on network TV — a change from decades of lower ratings due to blending network and cable broadcasts — and a first-time race due in 2026 that will run around the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers stadiums in Arlington, Texas.
“I’m very excited about the FOX thing and how that’s gonna work out, being on network and just getting more people to watch us race,” the Swede said. “I think that will be huge. I think the Arlington race, that looks really cool. I think that’ll be good for the series. We need to use all this good momentum the series has in the right possible way to grow the sport. And that’s the challenge. I don’t really think we have an answer for that right now, but these are good steps that happened that could make a difference.”
It’s no surprise the Indy 500, where McLaughlin earned pole position, stands out as his fondest memory of the season, but the reasons go far deeper than personal achievement.
“You got to look the 500 for the fact that it rained for, what, eight hours, looked like it was washed out, and nearly everyone came back to their seats when we did get going,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And I was bummed when it was raining. I was like, ‘F—. I got my first start at the front in the 500, I’m on pole, it’s probably gonna be a Monday race, and then there’s gonna be no one in the stands.’ That’s very vain of me, but that’s how I was thinking.”
The green flag finally waved four hours after the scheduled 12:45 p.m. start, and when the checkers waved near 8 p.m., Penske’s Newgarden pulled off an amazing last-lap pass to capture his second straight 500 win as McLaughlin led six times for 66 laps — more than any other driver — on the way to taking sixth.
“So seeing the fans come back and seeing the passion for that race, it made me fully understand how much the race means to the general public, especially in Indiana,” he added. “That was a big thing, which was awesome to experience.”
Source: espn.com