Scott McLaughlin says the crash that ended his Indianapolis 500 before it even began was the worst moment of his life, and he still cannot explain why it happened. The New Zealand-born driver returned to the 2025 Indianapolis 500 weekend carrying the memory of a Turn 1 wreck that destroyed his car during the final pace laps and wiped out a starting spot he had earned by performance.
McLaughlin had been set to start 10th after leading 66 laps and finishing sixth the year before, a result that suggested he was moving toward contention in one of racing’s most demanding events. Instead, as he approached Turn 1 on the warm-up lap, his car snapped around, slammed into the inside wall and was ruined before the field ever took the green flag.
“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” McLaughlin said. “It was absolutely the worst moment of my life.” The crash came after months of buildup, days of practice, hours of interviews and promotion, and sponsor appearances, leaving the driver to absorb a public failure at the very moment the race was supposed to begin.
The incident unfolded on an unusually chilly day after the start had been delayed by persistent drizzle, and the scale of the audience only sharpened the pain. More than seven million people watched on television, while about 350,000 were in person at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. McLaughlin said, “The fact there was seven and a half million people watching that whole thing is what made it so hard.”
He said he left Australia’s Supercars series to race in IndyCar, chasing the kind of stage Indianapolis offers, and he arrived that day “laser-focused” on starting the race. But once the car broke loose, he said he had no warning and no answer. “To this day, I still have no idea what happened,” he said. “I felt like I was just warming up my tires.”
McLaughlin said the steering change that sent him into the wall happened so fast that it felt almost unreal. “It was a little aggressive on the tire warm-up, but the way it just went like that (snaps his fingers), it was tough,” he said. The crash also brought a flood of messages from around the world, forcing him to face the accident not just as a driver but as a public face of a team and a brand.
“It was embarrassing, but there was also shock in there as well,” McLaughlin said. “As much as I just wanted to roll into a ball and cry, I was trying to think about the brands who are on my suit, the person I drive for, the guys who are hurting back in the pits....” He added, “If you’re going to cry, you go into the trailer and you do it alone, because you need to be strong for your team.”
That pressure, he said, came close to breaking through. “That was the closest I got to not being strong for my team,” McLaughlin said. Ryan Blaney said he was floored by how quickly McLaughlin began moving past the incident, a sign of how quickly the paddock expected him to reset and race again. For McLaughlin, the 2025 Indianapolis 500 is not just another date on the calendar. It is the return to the place where one mistake, or one unexplained snap, cost him the chance to race before the race had even started.
