Markham, ON – Marcus Ericsson pulled out the victory in a crash-filled Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham on a new street circuit in Toronto’s suburbs. The Swede started fourth, but fell back as far as ninth during the pit cycles. The Andretti Global driver passed leader Romain Grosjean for the win with only four laps remaining in the 90-lap race. Andretti teammate Will Power finished third, followed by Alex Palou and Pato OWard.
“It was an eventful race as we expected,” explained Ericsson, who earned his fifth-career INDYCAR win and fourth on a street course. “It’s a really fun track but it’s really challenging, especially with the pavement being very high grip in the racing line. But off line it’s quite slick. I expected to have a lot of things happening and there were a lot of curve balls thrown at us. I felt that I had a really fast car but there were a lot of yellows. I had to work for it today. I wanted to show the pace. It was a lot of work to get through to the leaders. There were key decisions there where we decided to stay out (not pit under yellow). I was pushing really hard to stay out, which was not ideal because I needed a ton of pace to be able to pull out the gap needed to come out in a decent place.
“I loved the track from the first lap,” continued Ericsson, who led a total of 21 laps. “It’s really a challenging track. It’s a very high-speed track for being a street course. Usually, street courses are more slow speed. This track, the first section, Turns 1, 2, and 3, it is very high speed. The end of the lap, at Turn 10, is tricky with the bumpy braking there, a very quick turn in. It’s one of those tracks where you really need to have confidence in the car so you can attack. We’ve seen this weekend, it’s a tricky challenge as well because it’s very easy to get a little bit wrong. There’s no margin for error. You’re in the wall straightaway. It is a bit like a road course, but with walls around. Obviously, it suited me quite well and I enjoyed it.”
Grosjean came so close to winning his first INDYCAR race, having led 28 laps. But he could not defend his leading position because he was on a two-stop strategy. The Frenchman pitted on Lap 53, requiring him to save a lot of fuel, helped by two additional cautions. Fortunately, the red tires lasted about the maximum fuel window of 30 laps under green conditions. The race had six yellows for a total of 25 laps.
“Markham is an amazing track and fun to drive,” described Grosjean, who finished 7.530 seconds behind Ericsson, after starting 13th. “I was very impressed. I got lucky on the restarts. We started the weekend on the back foot, reverted to the setup on qualifying that we knew was better, but the red flag really hurt us. In the race, I felt straightaway we had some good pace. It was tough on the strategy to know what to do. It was very hard on the restarts because I just couldn’t get much temperature in the tires.
“At the end of the race, I knew we had to go 37-ish laps on the tires, on the fuel,” added Grosjean. “That was going to be a challenge. When I saw the No. 28 pitting, Marcus, I thought there was no way he would catch us. The No. 10 (Palou) was behind me, which is always a worry. So, I opened the gap. We should be safe. Next thing I knew, the 28 was coming. Nothing much you could do to defend. We crossed the finish line with nothing left in the tank. I cried a little. I’m not going to lie. But control what you can control. I did everything I could.”
Power managed his fourth podium of the season after starting last, in 25th, for causing a red flag in qualifying when he made contact with the Turn 10 wall and lost his two fastest laps.
“Great day!” said Power. “I was pretty good on restarts. I thought, why didn’t we take the yellow (pit)? Marcus stayed out and he won. We could have opted for that strategy but my tires went off pretty badly at the end so the strategy we did was correct for us. I just didn’t quite have the pace because I had that many more laps on my tires. I really hustled to make track position, which hurt my tires early.”
Asked about making contact with his teammate, Ericsson, in the Turn 5 hairpin, Power responded, “I didn’t realize that he was going for it. I told my team I was going to let him go on the straight. I didn’t even look in my mirrors. It was just a miscommunication.”
Anthony Roccasalva
Coming to a new track, teams had to guess what the best car set-up was and, without any data, they looked at other street course set-ups. Of the ten NTT INDYCAR teams, it was the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team that achieved the best result, with driver Louis Foster on pole and teammates Graham Rahal and Mick Schumacher qualifying in the top-ten (ninth and tenth, respectively).
Early in the race, there was chaos during the restart after Schumacher’s contact with the wall in Turn 4, on Lap 15. A number of drivers pitted under that caution, committing themselves to a three-stop race. Cautions tend to breed cautions. The third yellow flag waved when three cars came together in Turn 8. Soon after the restart, Foster passed Ericsson, but he brushed the left side wall and sling-shotted across to the opposite wall, making hard contact on Lap 43. A potential maiden win lost by mere inches on an unforgiving street circuit.
The Markham track was a great success and appreciated by all the drivers. There were 258 on-track passes of which 242 were for position, the most on record in the 40-year history of this event (Toronto/Markham). Only 17 of the 25 drivers who started the race finished on the 3.52-km/2.19-mile, 12-turn street circuit.
Four races remain, with Palou still holding a commanding lead in the title fight, with 542 points. Kyle Kirkwood ranks second, with 409 points, David Malukas has 405, Christian Lundgaard 403, and O’Ward is in fifth, with 385. There are still 216 points possible.
The next race is the Freedom 250, held on the streets of Washington DC, in front of the U.S. Capitol building, next Sunday, August 23.
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