Marcus Ericsson says he is going to be "kept up at night for a while" by a "painful" Indianapolis 500 defeat to Alex Palou.
Since his 2022 Indy 500 win, luck has deserted Ericsson. He almost won the 2023 event but a rule change, the result of a desire to finish the race under green-flag conditions, meant a late caution didn't end the race as it might have done previously and instead he was passed in a one-lap shootout by Josef Newgarden.
Then for 2024 Ericsson switched teams from Ganassi to Andretti. That was a disappointing first season, including the Indy 500, where a practice crash contributed to him starting at the back while in the race he was taken out in an early crash.
His form has improved this year but he has still been third of the three full-time Andretti drivers in terms of results.
Ericsson is always seen smiling in the paddock but after losing the lead to a decisive Palou move with 14 laps to go in Sunday's race, you could see the pain on Ericsson's face - even if he smiled through the experience.
UPDATE - Ericsson loses second in Indy 500 after Andretti penalties
"I had those lap cars ahead, and I was struggling a little bit in the dirty air," he explained, referencing Devlin DeFrancesco and Louis Foster, who were battling to stay on the lead lap.
P2. Gave it everything @AllegraOTC @AndrettiIndy @HondaRacing_US pic.twitter.com/3iX8PwKyZr
— Marcus Ericsson (@Ericsson_Marcus) May 25, 2025
"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."
It's fair to say Ericsson's 2022 Indy 500 win changed his life. It's the case for most of the people who win but, after years of people perhaps undervaluing or questioning his ability in Formula 1, he came to IndyCar and immediately delivered strong performances for Ganassi, culminating in that 2022 win.
"Right now I'm just disappointed," he added. "This race means everything to me. I know how much it means to win this race. So to finish second again, it's pretty painful."
With DeFrancesco and Foster having got back on the lead lap through the final stops, they were towing the leaders around in the closing stages. And once Palou had passed Ericsson, as he was the third car in line and Ericsson was fourth, it then became tough to make moves that deep in a train of cars without some more fortuitous opportunism.
Ericsson got pretty close to passing DeFrancesco - who was jostling with Foster - four laps before he was passed by Palou, and had he done so that might have changed everything.
"I had sort of a half-chance to get by one of them, and that would have put a buffer between me and Alex," Ericsson said.
"And when he overtakes me, he kind of had a run, but not a super run, and I sort of opened the door.
"Just those things that you play it in your head a million times already after the finish line, what you could have done differently there.
"It was tough with those lap cars to play it, but I had the best seat in the house there to lead the last 15 laps; I need to look at it again, but yeah, it's pretty painful."
On Monday morning, having stayed in his motorhome at the track, Ericsson spotted Palou on the fourth-floor balcony of the media centre and headed up, waited a significant amount of time for him to complete an interview, just to congratulate him for his win.
Palou joked Ericsson could wait for a second and that Palou’s first was a massive thing for him in his career, and you can probably predict Ericsson’s curt response, delivered with a big smile, admittedly.
If there's any positive to take from the situation, it's that even after an up-and-down start to the year Ericsson has moved into the top 10 in the championship and is two points behind team-mate Colton Herta, heading to a street track, which is typically a good format for Andretti.
But Ericsson isn't quite ready to focus on Detroit yet.
What we can do is point to some of the positives to balance out the negatives he highlighted, after finishing second in one of the biggest races in the world, at the end of a gruelling 200-lap race that a third of the 33-car field failed to finish.
"I'm really proud of the team, we've really had a good month, a good solid month, good qualifying weekend,” said Ericsson.
"This race was a bit strange. We started out fairly strong, I felt really comfortable the first part of the race, and then my car went really oversteer-y, I was really hanging on and sort of struggling to keep up with anybody, I felt like, and we had to make a tonne of changes.
"And then we had a bad pitstop that dropped us right to the back of the field. At one point we were last in the lead lap.
"So it was really looking like a bad day, but that's the cool thing with us and with the #28 crew, we keep fighting.
"We keep never giving up, and we keep fighting through and that's what we did today.
"I had some really good stints there in the second half of the race where I felt the car came more to me and put us back in contention, and then the last stop was really good, good call on the strategy, as well. I'm really proud of that fightback.
"It stinks. Second is a good result, but here it's not a good result. Here you've got to win."
That just hammers home what it feels like to finish second at the Indy 500, especially as a previous winner. All of the positives tend to go out of the window.
But in the context of not having the easiest ride at Andretti so far, and last year's Indy 500 being a disaster, there will be a lot to like about this Ericsson result - in time.
And getting beaten by Alex Palou in 2025 just feels like inevitability at this point.
