First Impressions: Laguna Seca 2026

1. No better time than the finale for domination, and Scott McLaughlin ended his season with a thrashing in Laguna Seca. Pole position, most laps led, victory. McLaughlin was near-flawless today. The New Zealander did not run away from the competition, Kyle Kirkwood kept him honest until the very end. This result is a fair cap to McLaughlin's season. He was good, respectable, but until today we had not seen McLaughlin really be the driver to beat. If he had not won a race in 2026, it would have been a fair encapsulation of his season. Then today happened and he was unquestionably the best driver of the day. McLaughlin gets to head into the offseason with at least the second-most confidence behind our champion. Perhaps it will lead to a surge in 2027.

2. Kyle Kirkwood was second on the day and Kirkwood earned second in the championship with this result. That is where Kirkwood has been this season, and it is pretty much where he has been for the last two seasons. Kirkwood has been in Álex Palou's shadow the most. Sometimes, Kirkwood overcomes the Catalan driver. Most of the time, Palou is the best. Kirkwood can hold his own and put up impressive drives. He has been a regular winner the last two seasons. The hard part is going that step further. This season could have been championship-caliber not long ago. In the age of Palou, it is second at best.

3. We finally had a clean race from Alexander Rossi and it was a complete weekend. Rossi was quick all weekend, but we have seen numerous weekends where practice looks good for Rossi and Ed Carpenter Racing and as the weekend continues the team declines and is not a factor in the race. Rossi was competitive today. He ran a slightly different strategy and it put him in a podium position. Rossi didn't have the pace to defeat McLaughlin and Kirkwood, but it was important Rossi and ECR had this weekend. This has been a messy season for ECR between accidents, mechanical failures and unforced errors, another one we saw today with the sister car. This team should be more competitive than the record shows.

4. Felix Rosenqvist had a spirited battle with David Malukas for fourth and Rosenqvist took it in the later stages of the race to cap off Rosenqvist's most successful, and arguably most pivotal seasons in IndyCar. He won the Indianapolis 500. He was good, but still not spotless. There were a number of races that did not turn out his way. He lost a good result at Arlington for jumping a restart. There were still off days, but Rosenqvist was highly competitive. Now, he returns to McLaren where his career once went sideways.

5. David Malukas had a better season than likely any of us expected even if he did not win a race. Malukas ended the season with a fifth-place finish, he ended up fifth in the championship, the top Team Penske driver. Malukas is the one Penske driver that did not win a race this season. I don't think that is a knock against him. He drove the best we have seen on road and street courses after rarely being a threat on any of those in his first few seasons. He was inches away from winning the Indianapolis 500. There might be another level he must ascend to, but he made a great stride in 2026.

6. Christian Lundgaard may not have ended up second in the championship, but sixth in the finale clinched him best Arrow McLaren driver, and that is bragging rights as he leaves the team. It is still rather stupefying Lundgaard has been let go after winning two races and finishing third in the championship while being replaced by Scott Dixon, who is coming off his worst season in over 20 years and who is 46 years old. It feels like McLaren has bought legacy hoping it will equal success. Sometimes the past is gone. Lundgaard showed promise for the future, and he just had his best oval weekend to boot last week in Milwaukee. McLaren has made a gamble that could backfire fairly quickly.

7. Even a slight pit bobble didn't derail Marcus Armstrong's finale, and Armstrong was able to finish seventh. The results do not tell the full story of Armstrong's season, and he was better than the results. He lost an engine in three of four races over the summer, including one that took away a sure victory at Road America. That flipped his season. The entire Meyer Shank Racing team appeared rattled and could not have a clean weekend. Armstrong needed this race. It was a good race, a positive to end on. He will be the team leader in 2027. The result must be better even if the bad ones were not his fault.

8. And we arrive at our champion Álex Palou, who went off-strategy and attempted a four-stop race. It didn't work, but Palou had the wiggle room to try things today. He didn't have to win. He didn't have to follow McLaughlin and try to jump him during a pit cycle. Palou could run a little harder. It didn't work. It didn't need to. Palou already claimed the championship. He can throw this race away. It will not affect him one bit.

9. Marcus Ericsson caps his revival season with a ninth place finish after taking a late grid penalty for an engine change. We knew Ericsson was capable of this. He was a regular top ten finisher at Chip Ganassi Racing. It didn't immediately click at Andretti Global. I think Andretti Global has been ironing out some wrinkles in the team. The team was better this year and Ericsson benefitted because of it. Now the team believes in him. That driver never disappeared. He was always there and now he can shine at Andretti.

10. Kyffin Simpson closes out an impressive season with a tenth-place finish. Simpson isn't flashy. There are still many races where he isn't notable, but he has become a driver that can finish somewhat regularly in the top ten and occasionally pull off a stellar result. There has been plenty of conversation about driving standards and the IndyCar approval process. We will discuss it in greater detail later. Simpson's junior record was not glowing, but in IndyCar he has shown to be capable. Let's keep that in mind moving forward.

11. Patricio O'Ward did not end on a high note. He didn't quite have it this weekend, and this is a weekend we have not seen from O'Ward and McLaren much in 2026. This group had its handful of anonymous races for the last few seasons. Those didn't really happen this year. If anything, we saw O'Ward run fifth and just remain there, nothing moving forward or backward. This was an odd day for O’Ward. He never showed any threatening pace. 

12. We are going to handle a few drivers in chunks here.

Santino Ferrucci went from 21st to 12th. Ferrucci has this kind of race at least four times a year. Doesn't look quick, strategy works in his favor with a hair more speed. It is good to improve but he is constantly racing from behind that it limits his results.

Will Power's first season with Andretti Global concludes with a 13th place finish. Power had a brief off-track excursion. It was a yo-yo season for Power, but it mostly ended as a positive. You would think he should be more confident next year, but we also know Power is bound to throw away a few results a season. He did it speeding into pit lane while leading at Milwaukee.

Louis Foster was 14th. It is hard to tell if Foster improved in his sophomore season. The qualifying pace was not as good as last year, but he did get a few top ten finishes. How much of it is the driver and how much of it is the team?

Josef Newgarden struggled all weekend for speed and the best he could do was 15th. This is the second consecutive season where the takeaway is Newgarden must return to the drawing board. The comfort has not been there on road and street courses for arguably three years.

Rinus VeeKay held onto tenth in the championship though he was 16th in this race. Overall, a brilliant season for VeeKay and Juncos Hollinger Racing. It was VeeKay's best season in IndyCar. It was JHR's best season in IndyCar. This partnership was bountiful in success. Expectations only go up for next season as VeeKay is expected to return, but it is hard for the smaller programs to maintain this kind of success. VeeKay has shown a great ability to do more with less. The task might not be too challenging for him.

13. The Scott Dixon era at Chip Ganassi Racing ended with a 17th place finish and so mercifully ended a deflating season to an otherwise spectacular career. The winning streak is over at 21 seasons. The top-six championship finish streak is over after 20 seasons. Dixon exits 12th in the championship. Nothing lasts forever, but I think we all wished it ended on Dixon's term. Few drivers go out on top. All drivers lose it at some point. It is hard to wrap your mind around the fast ball being gone for Dixon.

Maybe this was just an off-year, but it doesn't feel like that is the case. We tell that to ourselves to save us from the truth. One of IndyCar's greatest has aged out. McLaren is taking a gamble on a 46-year-old driver recapturing magic for one, maybe two years. Maybe that is the case and all Dixon needed after 25 years at Ganassi. It doesn't feel like that is all we have witnessed.

14. Romain Grosjean ended the season in 18th, and he was 19th in the championship. Was the return to IndyCar worth it? He didn't seem as vocal with his frustration as we heard in the past. This was not a return to 2021 with Coyne. He will always have second at Markham.

Graham Rahal had such a season of polar opposites. At one point, he had three podium finishes and looked like a strong contender for a top ten championship finish. Then he was spun out of a podium finish at Road America, and his season never recovered. One top ten finish in the final ten races. I don't know where the form went. Every year, we are curious over what is happening at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, and it is not the good kind of curiosity.

Caio Collet took a grid penalty and never recovered to finish 20th. It felt like Collet's season was inflated. The highs and promise did not feel as great as some led on. It wasn't a terrible season, but I don't think this is an astonishing talent.

A botched pit stop cost Christian Rasmussen any promising result, and he ended up 21st. It feels like Rasmussen's final results should be better, but if we looked back, his actual finishes might not have been that far over from how he actually ran this season.

Mick Schumacher coughed a golden opportunity to take rookie of the year with Dennis Hauger retiring on the opening lap of the season with an accident. That is kind of the tale of any driver at RLLR for the last four seasons. It is kind of the tale of this rookie class. None of them ran that strong to make a large gain if another had a poor result.

15. Sting Ray Robb was 23rd and Nolan Siegel was 24th. Neither result is surprising. Both futures are questionable.

16. Dennis Hauger will claim rookie of the year, but no rookie ended on a lower note than Hauger. This season was a big disappointment. Andretti Global supported Hauger's entry at Coyne, and the results were not up to standard. None of the rookies did well this year. None of the rookies have been competitive for the last four seasons. We haven't had a rookie crack the top fifteen in the championship since 2022.

I am not sure what it is about this current environment that makes it so difficult for rookies to find competitive speeds in IndyCar. I think all three rookies should get another season, almost every rookie should get more than one season, but they all need to be better should they get a second opportunity.

17. We had a typical Laguna Seca race to end the season. Start at the front, stay at the front. There were some battles, but it settled pretty quickly. It almost feels like the teams have so much information that there are no surprises or teams getting it that wrong on strategy. I don't know how you fix it. Laguna Seca is a different race. Kirkwood did close in and keep McLaughlin honest, but Kirkwood never quite got there for a challenge. Maybe Kirkwood never really had what it took to get the better of McLaughlin.

18. And now the season is over. We have six months and a day until the next race, about eight seats to fill and half the schedule to find out. There is almost too much time to review, but we will start tomorrow.