Marcus Ericsson has attributed his landmark podium in the Texas IndyCar race to a serious off-season focus on ovals.
The former Formula 1 driver finished behind only Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin in the 248-lapper which served as Race 2 of the 2022 season, and even led 10 laps during the fuel games midway through the contest.
Previously, Ericsson had not finished higher than fifth in 15 oval starts, with an average result of position 14.5.
Despite how foreign left-turn-only circuits might be for him, the Swede maintains he always liked them, and the showing in Fort Worth was a simple matter of hard work.
“To be honest, ever since I came to IndyCar, I’ve enjoyed ovals,” said the driver of the #8 Chip Ganassi Racing entry.
“There’s been a lot to learn coming from European racing – no oval experience – it’s been a quite steep learning curve.
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“I felt pretty comfortable on them, but I haven’t really got any results on them until [Texas].
“That was one of the big areas that we focused on in the off-season this year, to really analyse, for me to look at lots of data, onboards, trying to understand oval racing better so I could get some more results on the ovals.
“If you look at the championship last year on road and street, I think I was second or third in that championship, but on ovals 12th or 13th; an area we’ve been focusing on this season.
“To get to the first oval of the year, get my first podium on the oval, I think shows all that work that I and my engineer and the rest of the [#]8 car group, Dario, all the work we put in is paying off.”
‘Dario’ is, of course, the three-time Indianapolis 500 winner by the name of Franchitti, who remains with the team as an advisor and driver coach.
Whatever help he gave Ericsson, the man in #8 was not the only CGR driver to achieve something of a breakthrough at Texas Motor Speedway.
Jimmie Johnson had never done any better than 17th in an IndyCar race until he took Car #48 to sixth at the chequered flag on the 1.44mi oval.
That was, of course, Johnson’s first oval event in an IndyCar, but Ericsson says that he leaned on the experience of the seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
“Jimmie was a great asset for us this weekend with all his experience on ovals,” he explained.
“You could definitely feel already from Lap 1, this is more like his home, driving on the ovals.
“Even though the cars are very different than what he’s used to, he’s been helping a lot this weekend for all of us, I think.
“Like I said, to have four cars in the top eight, I think that’s a super impressive team effort.
“It bodes well for the rest of the year to have that many strong cars and drivers on the ovals. That’s going to help us especially for the [Indianapolis] 500 coming up.”
As Ericsson noted, it was a solid outing for CGR, despite Team Penske going one-two-four, with Scott Dixon fifth in Car #9 and Alex Palou seventh in Car #10.
In the series standings, it is Palou leading the way for the team in third, with Ericsson in fifth, Dixon in sixth, and Johnson jumping to 11th.
The third event of the season is the Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 8-10 (local time), with that race to be streamed live and ad-free on Stan Sport.
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