SCOTTY IS BETTER THAN LEWIS!

Scott McLaughlin is a better than Lewis Hamilton – Photo: Ross Gibb

New King of the Mountain Scott McLaughlin is a better driver than five-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton.

By BRUCE NEWTON

That’s the incredible assessment of McLaughlin by his co-driver, Alex Premat, the first Frenchman to win The Great Race.

Premat even outdid DJR Team Penske team owner Roger Penske, who heaped praise on the 26-year-old New Zealander and – not for the first time – compared him with IndyCar legend Rick Mears.

But it’s Premat’s comments in the wake of McLaughlin’s last lap heroics to hold off fellow Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen at Mount Panorama that are truly gob-smacking.

“Honestly, Scotty is top level,” Premat told Auto Action. “He is at the same level as (Lewis) Hamilton or maybe even better.

“I am sure if you put Scotty in Formula 1, he would beat Lewis Hamilton.”

Premat has a solid basis on which to make that comparison as he raced against Hamilton in Formula Renault, Formula 3 and was his teammate in GP2 in 2006.

Since then Hamilton has raced for the McLaren and Mercedes F1 teams, won five drivers’ world titles and is on track to win his sixth. He has won 82 F1 grand prix races.

That long-speculated move for McLaughlin to America and NASCAR is inevitably coming closer, based on Penske’s post-race comments at Bathurst.

“We want him to come over and he’ll have to start like we did here (from the beginning),” Penske said. “But he’s got a good future and you’ll see him in America, I’m sure, in the near future.”

He added that the Bathurst win would not accelerate McLaughlin’s transition to North American racing.

“No, I think it’s just part of the plan,” Penske said. “I think that along with (Team Penske president) Tim Cindric and the rest of the team, we just have to decide what’s the best path that he’s able to join and move forward in his career.”

Read the full story plus so much more from behind the scenes at Bathurst in the latest issue of Auto Action (1772), available both in stores and digitally right now.

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