Scott McLaughlin, driver of the No.3 XPEL Team Penske Chevrolet started the All-Star race at the Thermal Club, the $1 million Challenge from fourth place and came home in second behind race winner Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing and speaking following the action, McLaughlin said:
“It all started I think with my heat race. I think I had a really good start. I was lucky not to get caught up with the kerfuffle with Grosjean and settled into a rhythm. Felt like we had a good speed in the heat race. In the final race, we were pretty conservative, looking after our tires at the start, being smart, knowing there’s guys that were going crazily slow, almost too slow I feel like, from a racing perspective. At the start of race two, I tried to have a go at Alex, but ultimately he was just a little bit faster with that clean air. It was always going to be clean air was going to be king this weekend. I settled in, tried to maximize what we had today with the XPEL Chevy. That was second today.”
Championship leader Josef Newgarden in the No.2 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet started the All-Star race from sixth place and came home in eighth and speaking following the action he commented saying:
Just really hard racing there with me and Alex (Rossi) and kind of a microcosm of the two strategies you saw today. We didn’t quite go into the heavy tire conservation mode that he and others did over the first 10 laps before the break. You could tell it benefited him greatly and while the Hitachi Chevy was good today, I was just trying to hold him off. It was a great weekend here at Thermal. They rolled out the red carpet once again, and I think you saw today that this track could put on an entertaining show with more laps, tire degradation and pit strategies.”
Will Power in the No.12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet failed to make it into the $1 million Challenge as he finished the opening Heat race in ninth place.
Just a bit unfortunate on the first lap to get pushed wide. Didn’t want to get too aggressive there and lost a bunch of spots there. Almost made it back to the transfer spot but just needed a few more laps. The Verizon Business Chevy was really good and the track proved to be very racy.”
Next up is the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach which takes place on April 21.