HE makes no secret that he wants to pursue a full-time IndyCar drive, but Scott McLaughlin has vowed Sunday's Bathurst 1000 will not be his last.
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The DJR Team Penske star placed fifth in Sunday's Great Race before being presented with his third consecutive Supercars drivers championship trophy.
Then on Monday he caught a 10.30am flight to Los Angeles ahead of making his IndyCar Series debut for Team Penske.
"Team Penske is one of the best teams in the sport, we've got the best team-mates to look on for data and stuff, so I'm going to soak everything up like a sponge," McLaughlin told Supercars Trackside.
"It's an opportunity, who knows where it leads to, but it gives me an opportunity to see if I like the category and see what I can do in the future. But I know that I've got a return flight home.
"As far as I'm concerned right now, I'm contracted for next year here, but look, we'll just have to see how it all plays out.
As McLaughlin indicated, he is contracted to drive the Shell V Power Racing Ford Mustang in next season's Supercars series.
But the 27-year-old feels he has ticked all the boxes off his list of what he had hoped to achieve in Supercars and wants to explore new challenges.
"I've done everything I wanted to achieve here, I've done championship, Bathurst, I've won races I've wanted to achieve, I've moved up the leader board, I've always wanted to be in that top five, top four in terms of wins," he said.
"Yeah, if Roger [Penske] came to me tomorrow and said 'Hey, we're doing it [IndyCar] next year' I'd 100 percent be into it."
Whether or not McLaughlin ends up in Supercars or IndyCars next year, he said he would "absolutely" add to his nine Bathurst 1000 starts.
"Well after the day I had today, I have to come back," he laughed.
"This race is forever, I don't care what happens, I'll always be searching for [it]. Whether it's next year as a full-timer or whatever, I'll always try to come back to the Bathurst 1000 if things permit."
McLaughlin has called the Bathurst 1000 the "best race in the world" and his desire to win it again is strong.
His bid for glory on Sunday came undone during a safety-car period on lap 98. At that stage his co-driver Tim Slade was still two laps short of the minimum required and had to stay in the car.
While Slade battled hard as he ended up doing 71 laps, he lost time to the full-time drivers ahead of him on track.
Slade was in position five and some 15 seconds off the lead when he brought the #17 Mustang for McLaughlin to take over.
McLaughlin made some of that back, but was forced to fuel save. The team tried to pull off an under cut with their final stop, but it was not enough to get on the podium.
