Scott McLaughlin's 2025 Indy 500 crash was 'worst moment of my life.' He's back to change narrative
· Yahoo Sports
INDIANAPOLIS — Penske’s Scott McLaughlin walks out of the Team Penske garage and immediately addresses last year’s debacle.
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McLaughlin approached late May 2025 with hope. A championship was in sight. But then his world came crumbling down.
The Indiana Pacers had rallied from a 14-point deficit with 3:14 left in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the New York Knicks. McLaughlin, a lifelong Knicks fan, still remembers Tyrese Haliburton's miraculous shot that left him pissed on that May 21 night.
Four days later, at the Indy 500, Indiana would lend him another blow. He’ll talk about that soon. The Knicks are back in the conference finals this season and are too good a topic for the New Zealand native. So much so that McLaughlin is unbothered by the rain falling on him during the minute walk from the Penske garage to the team’s refreshments room on Legend’s Row at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
McLaughlin reaches the room, takes a seat and leans back in a black stack-table side chair. He’s now talking about growing up in New Zealand and moving to Australia when he was 9. But somehow the convo comes back to the Knicks. The questions arise.
Can they get it done? Will New York have another meltdown?
Then the conversation about his own begins.
The scene is still clear in McLaughlin’s head. McLaughlin hit the throttle pedal hard on the main straight as the field was on the pace lap. The car lost traction and hit the inside retaining wall on the main straight before stopping in the warmup lane inside of Turn 1. McLaughlin could only put his hands to his face in disbelief and agony during what he described as “the worst moment of (my) life.” His chance to participate in the 109th Indy 500 was gone.
McLaughlin will start in Row 3 during the 110th running of the Indy 500 on Sunday. He enters the race not yet whole after last year.
But he’s refined.
“It’s still hard and feels like I wasted one away. I don’t think I’ll ever let go of it, to be honest,” McLaughlin told IndyStar earlier this month. “It's still very hard for me to watch and I've watched the race multiple times, and know what happened. But you can either turn a negative into a positive or you can turn a negative into a negative. And I felt like we've turned a negative into a positive and really learned from it.”
McLaughlin hasn’t 'let go’ of last year’s crash
McLaughlin wrestled with the intrusive thoughts for months; his only sense of relief coming when he saw his wife, Karly, and their 1-year-old daughter, Lucy, after the race.
He felt confused.
“I don’t know why it happened. I don’t understand why it happened.”
Guilt.
”I sent someone home in qualifying and didn’t even start the race.”
Ashamed.
”It's not an easy feeling walking into the garage after you just destroyed a piece of art, their work.”
McLaughlin blamed himself for a “long time, and probably still do,” he said. He wishes he had been more cautious about the part of the track where he crashed. It was a cold day, and McLaughlin was eager to get his tires hot before the green flag waved. His brain was in panic mode, failing to remember that 32 other cars were in the same situation.
“I thought I was the only one in a bad situation,” McLaughlin said. “I learned a lot from that perspective-wise, that when you're battling something, nine times out of 10, everyone else is battling the same thing. It's just how you manage that.”
McLaughlin was honest with his emotions. It was the only way he could heal.
McLaughlin spoke with his family, team and his mind coach often during recovery. Sometimes the sessions with his mind coach were just a normal check-in. On other days, McLaughlin did visual exercises in which he closed his eyes and replayed last year’s crash in his head.
The feelings returned. Guilt. Shame. Confusion.
But McLaughlin refused to ignore them. To McLaughlin, the mind is a muscle. His needed to grow stronger.
McLaughlin, a pro driver for 14 years, knew his career would “not always be daisies.” But a 22-year-old McLaughlin couldn’t have managed last year’s crash. At 32, McLaughlin has learned to adapt to the good and the bad. He’s now a husband, a dad.
“I'm in the perfect time of my career to have gone through that. I probably wouldn’t have expressed enough to other people what I was going through (when I was younger),” McLaughlin admitted. “I’m mature enough now to accept that you can be weak, and you can show people that you're weak and people will help you. You have to keep working and get to a point where you rebound, and when you get the opportunity to win a race again, you’re ready for it. And I certainly feel like I am.”
Through a solid support system, McLaughlin is back in the greatest spectacle in racing. In the race his 8-year-old self dreamed of while racing karts at the KartSport Hamilton circuit in Ōhaupō, New Zealand.
McLaughlin is a firm believer in “Indianapolis chooses the winner.” Find favor in the sight of the track Sunday and the narrative about McLaughlin shifts.
McLaughlin likens his story to Scott Dixon’s. Dixon had a violent crash during the 2017 Indy 500. The Chip Ganassi driver has won 26 IndyCar Series races and two IndyCar Championships since.
McLaughlin won pole position in the 2024 Indy 500 with a record four-lap average speed of 234.220 mph. His 52 career wins ranks third all-time across Penske programs. McLaughlin holds the team’s all-time poles record alongside Will Power at 64.
McLaughlin plans to be a driver for the next 10 to 15 years and hopes last year doesn’t define his career.
Win Sunday, and the crash goes from a moment of distress to one of resilience. A necessary bump in the road en route to the ultimate prize and a noteworthy legacy.
”I’m looking forward to the opportunity to change the storyline, to go from zero to hero in some ways,” McLaughlin said. “Last year was hard, but I feel stronger for it mentally because of the family, friends, and (the) team around me. I never want that to happen to my worst enemy. It was a very tough situation, but we've got a cool opportunity to change the narrative and come back with just as strong a car and maybe win this race. There’s no doubt in my mind we can. If the stars align, we can do it. If not, we'll keep coming.”
McLaughlin enters 110th Indy 500 with new perspective, family by his side
The conversation nears its end and shifts back to the Knicks as McLaughlin waits for his bread to pop out of the toaster. McLaughlin’s parents got him a Knicks jersey when he was 2 years old. The New York-based team has an aura in the eyes of the Kiwis.
With Knicks forward OG Anunoby returning from a hamstring injury for the Eastern Conference Finals, McLaughlin is confident he’ll be singing the team anthem, ‘Go New York, Go New York, Go,’ by the end of the series.
McLaughlin will race in the Chevrolet Grand Prix in Detroit on May 31. He planned to catch a game if the Pistons advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. The thought of sitting in floor seats lit up his eyes. But he’ll have to settle for the trailer's TV. The Pistons lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 7 of the second round Sunday.
McLaughlin can talk sports all day. Marrying into a family of Mets fans hasn’t brought many days of elation. Karly, Lucy, and their two dogs are at IMS most of May, a comfort he didn't have last year. His sources of joy are present. It gives him an edge.
McLaughlin recalls Karly telling him after the accident, “God just didn’t want me in that race.” The thought of divine denial was the start of McLaughlin’s reformation. Even though his mind is still in search of peace after 2025, McLaughlin can’t deny the beauty in adversity. How it shapes. How it purifies. How it refines.
“I'm racing, this is my job, but ultimately, everything else doesn't matter when I get home. Maybe some higher spirit was telling me, ‘Hey, dude, you learn from this, and it's not your time yet,’” McLaughlin said. “I felt like I was always riding on results and thinking that if I go bad, that everyone's gonna be on me. But I've got a great marriage and a baby girl.
“Certainly, at the time of the crash, I didn't have the perspective I have now on what my life is and what it entails, or that everything is OK. Tomorrow is another day.”
Joshua Heron is an enterprise and Fever reporter. Follow him on Twitter at @HeronReports.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Penske’s Scott McLaughlin on 2025 Indy 500 crash: 'Worst moment of my life'