For the third time up to now 4 years, Marcus Ericsson discovered himself in place to win the Indianapolis 500. However for the second time, a despondent Ericsson was left questioning what may have been after a runner-up run at day’s finish.
“This race is a winner-takes-it-all sort of race, and I had that race coated,” Ericsson stated afterward. “It is fairly painful.”
After rolling off ninth, Ericsson averted the chaos of what proved to be an attrition-filled race and his No. 28 Andretti International crew performed the technique appropriately to place the Swedish star in rivalry heading into the race’s closing phases.
Ericsson emerged from the final spherical of pit stops with the lead and paced 17 laps within the last run of Sunday’s race, following within the wake of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster as they fought to remain on the lead lap. However Palou constructed up a run and surged previous Ericsson with 14 laps to go, securing the lead with a transfer that caught the 2022 Indy 500 champion off guard.
“I had these lap automobiles forward, and I used to be struggling just a little bit within the soiled air,” Ericsson stated in his post-race press convention. “Alex obtained sort of a run on me, however I assumed he wasn’t going to go for it. And that is the factor that is going to maintain me up at evening for some time, that second and what I did and did not do.”
Ericsson spent the closing stretch attempting desperately to construct a run, attempting to remain flat and use all his automotive’s tempo to construct a run within the final 5 laps. However with the lapped site visitors towing Palou alongside, Ericsson couldn’t construct the run he wanted to make a race-winning transfer. He may solely watch because the laps ticked down, earlier than a last-lap warning finally introduced the race to a detailed.
A powerful Indy 500 for Ericsson
Marcus Ericsson, Andretti International
Picture by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Photographs by way of Getty Photographs
All issues thought of, it wasn’t a foul day for Ericsson’s No. 28 crew. He’d began ninth, however suffered with an ill-handling machine after the opening stint that left him “hanging on and form of struggling to maintain up with anyone.” Within the center phases, a sluggish cease left him close to the again of the pack. However optimistic modifications and the proper pit technique turned Ericsson’s race on its head, giving him an opportunity to snag a second Indy 500 victory.
If he’d simply been capable of navigate the lapped site visitors, Ericsson might need accomplished simply that. However a failure to take action could have value the 34-year-old a season-altering win — and he doesn’t assume it’ll depart his ideas for a lot of days to return.
“That is the factor that I’ll play in my head rather a lot to attempt to determine what I may have accomplished in another way as a result of one of many automobiles in between us, that will have been an enormous buffer to Alex,” he stated. “It is issues like that that I’ll need to — I do not know, it may hold me up at evening occupied with that, what I may have accomplished in another way, how I ought to have performed that in another way the final stint.”
Pictures from Indianapolis 500 – Race
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