Marcus Ericsson’s return to form culminated in a statement victory as the 35-year-old Swede ended a 63-race winless drought with a late charge to win the inaugural Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham.
Driving the #28 Andretti Global Honda, the win marked Ericsson’s fifth career IndyCar victory—his fourth on a street course—and his first visit to victory lane since St. Petersburg in 2023. For Ericsson, the triumph was the ultimate validation after an extensive off-season effort to rebuild his form and confidence following a challenging 2025 campaign.
“Yeah, it comes from hard work, first of all,” Ericsson said. “I had a terrible season last year. I lost a lot of confidence in myself and struggled with the car. It was a big reset over the winter. I worked very hard on myself, but also within the team, with my guys, to sort of try and get the car more to my liking, more in a window where I feel like I can perform and get the most out of myself.
“I think Will Power has been a big part of that, as well. Really driving the development on the setups in a certain direction, as well. That’s been really, really good. Also the fact, like Ron (Ruzewski, Andretti Global team principal) touched on, we are Will, Kyle and myself, three really fast drivers that work really well together pushing the team forward. I think that’s been paying off a lot, as well. Makes me really excited to know we’re going to continue that into next year with the momentum we have right now.”
That rebuilt momentum was put on display during Sunday’s dramatic closing laps. After pitting from the lead on Lap 69 under green-flag conditions and dropping to seventh, Ericsson charged back through the field on fresh softer alternate tires without the aid of a caution flag. He passed Romain Grosjean for the lead with five laps remaining and coasted to a 7.5305-second victory on the 12-turn, 2.19-mile temporary street circuit.
“It was an eventful race,” Ericsson said. “I think as we expected going into the race, seeing how yesterday played out. It’s a really fun track here, but it’s really challenging, especially with the pavement being very high grip in the racing line, but off line it’s quite slick. Expected to have a lot of things happening. There were a lot of curve balls thrown at us. I felt all the way through, especially in the race, that I had a really fast car.
“There were key decisions there where we decided to stay out. I was pushing really hard to stay out. I know it 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. But I really felt like the car was just so fast that I wanted to try and stay out and use that to my advantage.
“It was fun, that middle stint when I was doing quallie laps, two, two and a half seconds faster than the rest of the field. That was a good time. It was still tough to make our way back to the lead coming back in seventh. Had to work for it today.”
The victory – which marked the 79th IndyCar win for Andretti Global – comes on the heels of a mid-season contract extension for Ericsson, who emphasized that his resurgence has been building all year.
“It feels great to have the confidence from the team to continue,” Ericsson said. “But I feel like this year, it’s been a trend all season that we’ve been strong. I think I’m the fourth best qualifier in the field on average. I feel like we’ve had quite a few big results and podiums taken away from us from I hate saying bad luck, but things not really going our way, where we’ve been looking to be on our way to a podium for a long time of the race, but few things hasn’t gone our way.
“All the year, on every type of track, we’ve been fast. I think that says a lot about the Andretti Global organization, the work that Ron and everybody else has done, stepping it up on all types of tracks.
“I feel like my three years at Andretti, the first two years we had our specialty in street courses. Every now and then we could be good on other tracks as well. This year that’s the big thing. I feel like we don’t have any real weakness. We’re very strong on all tracks. Not saying we’re going to stop. We need to keep pushing. That’s been a big difference.
“For me, the #28 crew has been working really well together. I have a couple of new people on my car this year. We’ve been gelling really well.
“I don’t see this as sort of a surprise that we’re sitting here winning. I feel like that’s been trending that way. I’ve been telling my guys the last couple of races, We keep doing what we’re doing now, it’s going to be a matter of time, not a matter of if or not, because we’ve really been strong every race here for a long time.”
Ruzewski highlighted the pit-wall strategy and execution that allowed Ericsson to execute his final charge to victory lane.
“We knew Marcus had pace,” Ruzewski said. “Right before there was a little bit of contact (with Power in the hairpin corner fighting for third), we just talked about, ‘Hey, Marcus has got a lot of pace, tire and fuel advantage, we need to take the fight to Palou.’ Obviously we’re always thinking about the big picture. We need to take points away from Alex to keep Kyle in the conversation at all. It was coming and we knew both cars had pace. We knew he had to hunt him down. That was of the best way to do it. Even when Will got in front of Marcus, that was kind of key because Will was able to use his tires to close up and get pace on the other guy.
“I think the stands are working well together. There’s know egos. Right now it’s working really well.”
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