How Ericsson achieved Indy immortality as Ganassi's main man stumbled

Marcus Ericsson’s topline career has been pock-marked by little bobbles at high-pressure moments but lately he’s been showing iron resolve in IndyCar races.

Last year in Detroit, he held off Rinus VeeKay and Pato O’Ward to score his first IndyCar win. Later that summer, Ericsson delivered an unlikely triumph at Nashville with a damaged car after taking off from the back of a rival in the early laps. If it took some good fortune and great tactics to get him to the front of the pack that day, he was unshakeable once there and it was Colton Herta who crashed in pursuit.

But if he thought that was pressure… well, last Sunday was something else again. And he responded beautifully to score Ganassi’s fifth Indianapolis 500 triumph 10 years after its last to become only the second Swedish winner of the event (the other was Kenny Brack in 1999).

For much of the 106th running of the Indy 500, he didn’t appear to be Ganassi’s most likely victor, but cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Once Ed Carpenter Racing’s arch disruptor Rinus VeeKay had been squeezed back into third place on lap three, Scott Dixon and Alex Palou took it in turns to lead, each helping the other save fuel. Despite these efforts, they had to stop on laps 30 and 31 respectively, whereas Ericsson – who’d been sitting in the draft in fourth – stretched his fuel to lap 33, and the Arrow McLaren SP duo of Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist, seventh and eighth through that first stint, pitted as late as lap 35.

VeeKay emerged from the pits in a net third place and was fast enough to pass Dixon again to take second place. Then, on lap 38, his car twitched uncontrollably at Turn 2 and sent the young Dutchman into the SAFER barrier.

Ericsson wasn't a factor in the lead battle for most of the race, with Dixon leading 95 laps in total

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

At the restart, Palou and Dixon were able to resume their back’n’forth, while O’Ward, who’d received excellent service from his #5 AMSP crew, swiftly demoted Ericsson to grab third.

On lap 68, the Dixon-Palou show up front lost a member. Callum Ilott had squirmed and slid his Juncos Hollinger Racing machine at into the SAFER barrier at Turn 2 and brought out the second caution on lap 69. Just before this occurred, Dixon and 12th-placed Conor Daly in another Carpenter car had pitted, but now the pitlane was closed, as it always is in caution periods.

Palou was only about one second from making it in without getting pinged by Race Control, but instead he had to drive down pitlane without stopping. But he was now running on fumes, and so he had to stop for fuel. The punishment for emergency services in a closed pit is to restart from the back of the field. Barring a miracle, his winning chances were gone.

Ganassi pulled Dixon in on lap 175, and O’Ward stopped on lap 177. By then O’Ward had the news that, sensationally, Dixon’s sudden lock-up on his way into the pits had seen him break the pitlane speed limit

Daly, in front of his cheering home crowd, was only too pleased to become Dixon’s new sparring partner up front, with O’Ward watching them from third, just ahead of Ericsson and Tony Kanaan.

On lap 106 came the crash that most had been predicting for the past two weeks: Romain Grosjean was into the SAFER barrier at (where else?) Turn 2. Winded, puzzled, apologetic, but thankfully uninjured.

Again, Daly had managed to pit just before the yellow came on and the pits closed so, when his rivals all stopped, he took the lead. It didn’t last long, however. Dixon, O’Ward and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing’s Santino Ferrucci all slipstreamed past on the front straight even before they reached Turn 1, although Daly would blast by Ferrucci down the back straight to reclaim third, and Rosenqvist would also demote DRR’s plucky little one-off. Behind them ran two more Ganassi cars, Kanaan and Ericsson in sixth and seventh.

There was then stasis at the front, with O’Ward apparently unwilling or unable to swap the lead with Dixon. The 2008 winner and six-time IndyCar champion was going to have to do this the same way Simon Pagenaud did in 2019, trying to make it work on fuel while sitting out front and therefore burning up more than his rivals. No surprise then, that his next pitstop came on lap 142, while Rosenqvist went to 143 and O’Ward to 144. The latter emerged ahead.

Team-mates O'Ward and Rosenqvist came on strong through the race, with the Mexican leading 26 laps

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

There was then a caution period for Scott McLaughlin who had a shunt in Turn 3 that stretched down the short chute and saw the Penske make a second impact at Turn 4.

As the leader, O’Ward was a sitting duck at the restart, and he was immediately passed by Dixon down the front straight, while the second AMSP car of Rosenqvist reasserted itself in third after being threatened by Daly and Ferrucci.

This time, O’Ward kept up with Dixon and moved to the front for a few laps before the Ganassi driver reasserted himself. At this point, AMSP very wisely split their strategies, bringing in Rosenqvist as soon as the final pitstop window opened on lap 172, while Ganassi pulled Dixon in on lap 175, and O’Ward stopped on lap 177. By then O’Ward had the news that, sensationally, Dixon’s sudden lock-up on his way into the pits had seen him break the pitlane speed limit – the dominant force of the previous couple of hours would need to serve a drivethrough penalty. He emerged 26th.

If Dixon’s dream of a second Indy win was crushed for another year, despite him breaking Al Unser’s 29-year-old record for most laps led in the 500, the Ganassi team still had hope.

On lap 181, Ericsson, who had stopped on the same lap as O’Ward, passed him and closed up on Rosenqvist, whose early stop had seen him emerge ahead of his team-mate. Two laps later, the two Swedes swapped places, so once the off-strategy runners had also made their final stops, Ericsson was into the lead on lap 190. And comprehensively so: he soon pulled a three second margin over O’Ward – barring pitstop sequences, this was the biggest lead anyone had enjoyed all afternoon. It was all going smoothly.

“We came out third and caught Felix and Pato and passed them, pulled a gap,” recalled Ericsson. “I was hoping that was the race-winning move. Had that 3s gap. We had it covered. The only thing that could stop us was a caution, and of course that caution came.”

On lap 194, Ericsson’s rookie team-mate Jimmie Johnson struck the Turn 2 wall and out came the caution flag. It was a big hit (small hits are rare at Indy), there was a lot of debris scattered, and Johnson’s self-extrication was not the work of a moment, and so Race Control, to try and ensure the race didn’t finish under caution, turned yellow to red, and the remaining 27 runners trickled into pitlane to allow the track to be cleared.

After Dixon's penalty, Ericsson moved to the front and pulled away from O'Ward, but his hopes of victory looked to be dented when Johnson crashed

Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images

“It's not supposed to be easy to win the 500,” said Ericsson. “Those 10 minutes sitting there in the pitlane during that red flag was some of the hardest 10 minutes of my life probably, thinking what to do, thinking that I'm leading the biggest race in the world, and I'm that close to win it.”

By the time the field was rolling again, there would be a two-lap shootout for glory. Had Ericsson lost his nerve, he’d have lost the race for no restart leader had thus far managed to hold onto the lead by Turn 1. But he timed his getaway off Turn 4 to perfection, and then wildly snaked back and forth across the track to try and break the tow. It worked and he was unthreatened into Turn 1.

The focus temporarily switched to Rosenqvist, who had used his team-mate’s tow to try and slice down the inside of Kanaan for third. The 47-year-old 2013 winner was having none of that, however, and hung on around the outside of Turn 1 to reassert himself in third by Turn 2.

"I was actually sitting during dinner here last night talking with Dario [Franchitti] about this type of scenario, if I'm leading when it's towards the end of the race the last couple laps, what to do, how to break the tow of the car behind, how to place the car…" Marcus Ericsson

Down the back straight, again Ericsson slalomed to maintain his advantage and it worked… to a point. But it perhaps made him a tad cautious into Turn 3 and so, along the short chute and through Turn 4, O’Ward was back with him. Ericsson weaved so far left onto the front straight it appeared momentarily as if he was heading into the pits, but his pursuer doggedly followed him, and approaching Turn 1 for the final time he pulled out and drew alongside the Ganassi driver.

But he was on the outside, and Ericsson had necessarily eased right, too, to take the racing line. O’Ward had to ease the throttle and concede, and his challenge was over. Even before Sage Karam brought a slightly early conclusion to proceedings by crashing his DRR car at Turn 2 and bringing out the caution flag, Ericsson had broken his rival’s challenge. He ran out a deserving winner, having delivered under the greatest pressure in racing.

“I knew Pato was going to have a run on me because we've seen all month it's really hard to defend when you're up front. I was actually sitting during dinner here at the Speedway on the infield last night talking with Dario [Franchitti] about this type of scenario, if I'm leading when it's towards the end of the race the last couple laps, what to do, how to break the tow of the car behind, how to place the car…

“I just tried to go out and execute that plan I had made in my head. Pato had a really good run on me. I wanted to put him on the outside because I knew it was going to be hard to go around my outside. I was not going to lift; there was no way I was going to lift. I just kept my foot down, and that was the race-winning move.”

Ericsson made his car just wide enough to see off O'Ward on the run to Turn 1 before Karam's crash brought out the yellows on the final lap

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

O’Ward was an unhappy second, his gripe apparently not with Ericsson, but with Chevy for not producing the power to get him around the Ganassi car, despite running substantially less wing. Kanaan admitted that no, he didn’t want this to be his last Indy, and he would try and improve on his still fine third place, and Rosenqvist was fourth, probably secretly happy that the limelight hadn’t been stolen by an O’Ward win.

Alexander Rossi climbed from 20th on the grid to finish fifth after a disappointing couple of weeks for the Andretti Autosport team. Grosjean’s demise was the worst of it, but Colton Herta’s back-flipping shunt on Carb Day meant switching to a back-up car and no track time to give it even a systems check beforehand. Little wonder he couldn’t progress from his 25th starting spot, and eventually he quit at two-thirds distance with a throttle-sensor problem.

Team Penske also had a disappointing day, over and above the McLaughlin shunt. Will Power climbed to seventh on the opening lap but then began suffering increasingly acute oversteer that saw him drop down the order. That couldn’t be cured until the final couple of stints, by which time he’d also hampered himself with a stall while leaving pits. Remarkably, his team-mate Josef Newgarden did the same, and so the pair of them finished 15th and 13th respectively.

Palou’s recovery drive to ninth could perhaps prove crucial in the IndyCar championship fight, but last Sunday belonged to his under-the-radar team-mate in the #8 car, and deservedly so.

Ericsson enjoys the taste of milk in victory lane after becoming the second Swede to win the Indy 500

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images