For the second time in his career, Marcus Ericsson finished second in Sunday’s Indianapolis 500.
The Swede was leading following the final pit stop sequence and had the advantage of fresher tires than Alex Palou behind.
Ericsson was stuck behind a couple lapped cars, however, and ultimately lost out when Palou surprised him with a dive into Turn 1 with 14 laps remaining.
The 2022 winner knew immediately that his chances at another win were likely over, and he stated afterwards that will replay the event in his head over and over.
“I had those lap cars ahead, and I was struggling a little bit in the dirty air,” explained Ericsson. “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
“I think the tough thing was those two lap cars or whatever they were, backmarkers, and they were sort of creating this dirty air that made it really hard to sort of overtake there in the end.
“But that’s the frustrating thing was that I had position on Alex and I sort of lost that, and that is — when that happened, he was definitely in an advantage. Yeah, that’s what I need to sort of look back at and try and see what I could have done differently.
“I tried to stay flat [after Palou passed]. The last three or four laps was about trying to give everything I’ve got to get a run and try to keep my foot down, had some moments, but not enough today.”
Ericsson led 17 laps in total and crossed the line only 0.6822 seconds behind Palou. He is well behind the Spaniard in the points, however, and sits 10th in the standings.
Discussion about this post