Scott McLaughlin knows all of Josef Newgarden’s tricks. That’s why he had to do something different still under the Lap 158 caution. McLaughlin had the second-best car as he ran in that spot for much of Sunday’s race.

After being P2 in practice on Friday, qualifying P2 for both races and finishing P2 on Saturday, why not try something new? Beating Newgarden on pure pace? Didn’t look favorable.

So, despite being second under that caution and just pitting 16 laps prior, McLaughlin was one of five cars to hit pit road. Why not? Why not see if fresh tires could help?

“Yeah, we’re at the point now where we you can risk a lot, whether that’s strategy and whatnot,” said McLaughlin.” Ultimately you don’t want to fall any further down in the championship standings.

“I think we’ve got to put pressure on Alex. We have to make sure he doesn’t get too far ahead. We know how crazy of a race Nashville is. Laguna is new because of the new pavement. I generally think it’s not over. We’re full steam ahead, just pushing.

“At the end of the day we have to put pressure on Alex as well. That comes from our team and how we work.”

He’d restart 10th and it didn’t take much to get him back up to the top five. He’d even get back up to fourth, but it didn’t pan out by time the final pit window opened. His car wasn’t handling well and he’d have to pit with the leaders still.

He’d never get back up to second as he’d finish fifth in the end.

McLaughlin now has 14 top 5 finishes in his 46 Indy Car starts so far and among his 14 top 5 finishes in the sport, 7 of which came on ovals. He was second in Texas 1 in 2021 and fourth in Gateway that season. Last year, he was second at Texas, third in Iowa 2 and third again in Gateway. This year, he was sixth at Texas and now runner-up and fifth at Iowa.

He’s also heating up on the season too.

McLaughlin has six straight top eight finishes now and seven in the last nine races. The only exception was the Month of May to where he qualified 16th and 14th in the GMR Grand Prix and Indy 500 and finished in the same spots too.

Since, he’s qualified 2nd in 4 of the 6 races with finishes of 7th, 8th, 5th, 6th, 2nd, 5th. It’s just turning those starts to a win.

He was held up in Detroit with Romain Grosjean, he should have pit at the end of last Sunday’s race in Toronto, didn’t have enough for Newgarden on Saturday and then swung for the fence on Sunday and it didn’t pan out.

It’s been that type of season but he still moves up to 5th in points (-148). He’s one point behind Marcus Ericsson for fourth and only 28 back from Scott Dixon for third.