NASHVILLE — For the second consecutive year, Scott McLaughlin led the field to green in the Big Machine Music City Grand Prix. For the second straight year, McLaughlin finished a close second too.

McLaughlin led 25 of 80 laps but just didn’t have enough over the final stint to pass Kyle Kirkwood as the New Zealand native had to settle for another runner-up finish on these 2.17-mile streets.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m disappointed,” McLaughlin said. “But it is what it is. I think we had a really fast car today. Just that first yellow destroyed a few things, which is probably going to play. You hope it doesn’t come, but it came. You take it or lose your advantage, try to reset and go again. That’s what we decided, the latter.”

McLaughlin led the first 24 laps before hitting pit road for the first time of the day on Lap 25. Most thought he messed up by not pitting under that first caution of the day on Lap 14, but that proved to be a potential mistake if he had.

It nearly cost Alex Palou to where McLaughlin was never worried about pit cycles. He pit for the final time on Lap 52. However, Kirkwood was already ahead and with the advantage.

McLaughlin had nothing for him over that final stint. Even with the help of two late race cautions, he never could get by on the pair of restarts.

“Yeah, we did pretty well. We were able to come back a little bit. But overall Kyle (Kirkwood) just had that little shorter stop that he could do, away they went.

“I was trying to do my best to hunt him down at the end. I just had a poor restart. I had no temp in my rear tires for some reason. So annoying. I don’t know what happened. Like I didn’t change my procedure. I’m normally pretty good on restarts, but I was terrible.

“Yeah, got to do a little bit of study on that. I think if I was a little bit closer, I might have been able to maybe throw a little dive bomb at him. Unfortunately couldn’t.”

While he feels like this was a race that got away from him, McLaughlin also feels irate with how these races are restarted.

“I just think from a sport perspective, though, the restarts are a joke,” he said. “We need to, like, I think we need to start on the start/finish line. We cannot pass until the start/finish line. You’re always going to have these yellows. You’re always going to have these clusters that cause red flags and make us look like…

“Yeah, there’s no cadence. Once there’s a yellow flag on a street circuit, it’s just a free-for-all. People bomb. We’re well within our rights to do that. If we want to have a pure race, we could have had a 10-lap shootout, me and Kyle there at the end. Instead we’re stop, start, stop, start. The action is fantastic. We just have no race.

“I just think everywhere we go, we don’t have to have it for ovals, but I think it happens at Long Beach. We talked about doing it, like, about not passing till the apex of the last corner. At least that.

“I think when it goes green, there’s kamikazes at the back and don’t care. Well within their right to throw it inside when it turns green. That’s fine. But we just have this terrible just stop, start, amateur-ish looking finish to races.

“I’m going to speak to Jay about it, Novak. We just need to go apex last corner or start/finish line. Just make a point where you can’t pass just to get it going.

“Look, I might be wrong. I might crash in turn one. What I’m saying, I’ve done it in Supercars. Formula 1 does it. Other sports around the world do it. It just gets the race going.

“Everyone is on cold tires. Someone is going to have a mistake. The guy behind him is going to go, I have a crack. People getting hurt. Rah-rah. I just think it looks amateur-ish, it really does.

“Road America this year, I passed Rahal before the last corner. I felt like a kamikaze. You have to run the rules how they’re run.

“It’s just such a simple thing. We move restarts, we do that, we do that. Nothing works until we, like, police it. We have to police something. It pisses me off, it really does.”

While it’s not a win, McLaughlin still carries on the momentum into next weekend’s race at Indy. This was his 2nd runner-up in the last 3 races and sixth consecutive top six result too. He’s qualified on the front row in five of the last seven races including four straight too.