Heartbroken Marcus Ericsson left pondering lapped traffic moves after Indy 500

For the third time in the past four years, Marcus Ericsson found himself in position to win the Indianapolis 500. But for the second time, a despondent Ericsson was left wondering what could have been after a runner-up run at day’s end.

“This race is a winner-takes-it-all kind of race, and I had that race covered,” Ericsson said afterward. “It's pretty painful.”

After rolling off ninth, Ericsson avoided the chaos of what proved to be an attrition-filled race and his No. 28 Andretti Global team played the strategy correctly to position the Swedish star in contention heading into the race’s closing stages.

Ericsson emerged from the last round of pit stops with the lead and paced 17 laps in the final run of Sunday’s race, following in the wake of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster as they fought to stay on the lead lap. But Palou built up a run and surged past Ericsson with 14 laps to go, securing the lead with a move that caught the 2022 Indy 500 champion off guard.

“I had those lap cars ahead, and I was struggling a little bit in the dirty air,” Ericsson said in his post-race press conference. “Alex got kind of a run on me, but I thought he wasn't going to go for it. And that's the thing that's going to keep me up at night for a while, that moment and what I did and didn't do.”

Ericsson spent the closing stretch trying desperately to build a run, trying to stay flat and use all his car’s pace to build a run in the last five laps. But with the lapped traffic towing Palou along, Ericsson couldn’t build the run he needed to make a race-winning move. He could only watch as the laps ticked down, before a last-lap caution ultimately brought the race to a close.

A strong Indy 500 for Ericsson

Marcus Ericsson, Andretti Global

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

All things considered, it wasn’t a bad day for Ericsson’s No. 28 team. He’d started ninth, but suffered with an ill-handling machine after the opening stint that left him “hanging on and sort of struggling to keep up with anybody.” In the middle stages, a slow stop left him near the back of the pack. But positive changes and the correct pit strategy turned Ericsson’s race on its head, giving him a chance to snag a second Indy 500 victory.

If he’d just been able to navigate the lapped traffic, Ericsson might have done just that. But a failure to do so may have cost the 34-year-old a season-altering win — and he doesn’t think it’ll leave his thoughts for many days to come.

“That's the thing that I'm going to play in my head quite a lot to try and figure out what I could have done differently because one of the cars in between us, that would have been a huge buffer to Alex,” he said. “It's things like that that I'm going to have to -- I don't know, it's going to keep me up at night thinking about that, what I could have done differently, how I should have played that differently the last stint.”