MOTORSPORT: Supercars star to head Stateside in 2020

Two-time Supercars champion Scott McLaughin could begin his high-profile move to the USA with an IndyCar race start before mid-year.

Team Penske is grooming its local hero for a full-time future in America and is now accelerating the plan after a highly-promising private IndyCar test last week at Sebring in Florida.

McLaughlin is being groomed for open testing with the full IndyCar field in February and a potential race start as soon as it fits within the program to defend his supercars crown with DJR Team Penske.

The news from America comes as Anton de Pasquale is widely touted as a potential replacement in the #17 Ford Mustang from 2021, with other youngsters including Thomas Randle, Bryce Fullwood and Will Brown attracting interest ahead of a full-scale revamp of the driving roster at the Queensland team.

McLaughlin ran 141 laps at Sebring and, although he was one second slower than the pace set by the highly-experienced Indy Lights champion Rinus VeeKay, he made a big impact with Team Penske president Tim Cindric, who is helping to drive his move to America.

Cindric is now investigating the pre-season IndyCar test program on February 11-12 at the Circuit of the Americas, home of the US Formula 1 Grand Prix, where he wants to run a fourth car for McLaughlin alongside Penske’s 2020 regulars Will Power, Josef Newgarden and Simon Pagenaud.

“We haven’t finalised whether we’re going to be able to run Scott at COTA or not, so we’re still working on that. It comes with the caveat of knowing that we’re going to enter him in a race at some point,” Cindric said in reports from the USA.

“IndyCar won’t let just anyone show up to an open test without a commitment to running somewhere else. So that depends on if we can put something together in time for that test or whether there’ll be something else, another opportunity.”

Cindric confirmed that COTA would be more than just a play date.

“We’ve checked Scott’s schedule to see if the COTA open test is a possibility or not, and yes it is from that standpoint. But from the final decision standpoint, we still need to figure out that part of it.”

The race in the states with the most potential is on the road course at Indianapolis, incidentally now owned by Roger Penske, on May 8-9 and Cindric admits it is “one of the possibilities” for McLaughlin.

The latest IndyCar developments have killed an earlier plan to inject McLaughlin into NASCAR racing in the US with Penske, which would have required a multi-year program to get him up to speed with the quirky cars and rough-and-tumble racing of the US stock car scene.

“When we looked at the IndyCar schedule and the Supercars schedule, and the time it takes to become a top-tier driver in IndyCar compared with NASCAR, open-wheel became maybe more appealing,” said Cindric.

“That was interesting for all of us, because there are more possibilities for doing a parallel [IndyCar-Supercars] program.”