Marcus Ericsson went into Sunday’s Chevrolet Grand Prix of Detroit presented by Lear looking for redemption following a challenging month of May, and that is exactly what he delivered in the No.28 Delaware Life Honda. The Swede started the 100-lap race from ninth and recovered from minor contact on the opening lap to run up front with both Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood.
In the closing laps of the race, he managed to close on and overtake Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong to score his maiden Andretti Global podium and speaking following the race he said:
“I’m super happy for the whole Delaware Life team. We’ve had to dig deep. We came from a really tough Month of May, and going into this weekend, we said we wanted to do a reset and start our season over. I think we did that today. We showed that we were well prepared and that our car was fast. We had a brilliant race with good strategy calls, good pit stops and just good decisions all the way through the race. We needed just a couple more laps to get the win, but I’m still proud of the result. So, let’s keep that momentum going.”
Kyle Kirkwood in the No.27 AutoNation Honda started the race from sixth place and came home in fourth place to give Andretti Global two cars in the top-six and speaking following the action, The Florida native said:
“It was a very hectic race today and we did something very traditional strategy-wise in what you would do from the lead in a lot of situations. Obviously, Dixon pitted earlier than us and jumped us because we fell into that window. That was a bad yellow. If we had just gone another five laps or so and didn’t have that yellow, we would have pit and been in the lead. That was the first time I ran hard in traffic trying to get by people and I just burned up the rears on that last stint. But, we had a really good shot at the win today and the No. 27 AutoNation Honda was awesome, especially in those first two stints. We led a lot of laps out there and stayed strong during a chaotic race. I’m really happy with our performance today.”
Leading the field to the green, Colton Herta took today’s start from the pole for the 12th time in his INDYCAR career. The Gainbridge Honda held a commanding position in front, leading 33 laps in the race’s opening stages and recording the fastest lap of the race on Lap 14 before bad luck crept into Herta’s day. Just before the halfway point of the race, the Gainbridge Honda made contact with the Turn 5 barrier and Herta was unable to recover from the mid-race contact finishing a lap down.
Following the race, Herta said:
“Overall, today was a disappointment. It was a crazy race and it really seemed like anything could happen. We’ll fight back at Road America and hope for a stronger result for the Gainbridge Honda.”
Andretti Global Chief Operating Officer Rob Edwards said:
“Between our IMSA win with WTRAndretti yesterday, Louis’ INDY NXT pole and win and the INDYCAR race today, it was almost a perfect race weekend for Andretti Global. Unfortunately, we came up a little bit short in the INDYCAR race today. Regardless, we were happy to get second and fourth with Marcus and Kyle. We were disappointed we couldn’t do better with Colton – we obviously had the car but just had a couple of things not go our way. All-in-all, two wins, a podium and a fourth-place finish isn’t a horrible weekend but not the weekend we wanted.”