The IndyCar series will return next weekend following a three-week summer break. Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson leads the championship, with Will Power in a close second place – and nine races left in the 2022 season.
That the top two in the championship represent Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske, respectively, is not a surprise. Since the reunification of major American open-wheel racing in 2008, IndyCar has awarded a season championship 14 times and only once has it not gone to a driver from either of these two powerhouse teams.
But it is more of a surprise to find Marcus Ericsson leading the charge for Ganassi and Will Power doing the same for Penske. These weren’t two names which were widely tipped as top contenders back in February when the season began at St. Petersburg, Florida.
With Álex Palou entering as the reigning IndyCar champion after his first year with Ganassi and six-time champion Scott Dixon still capable of winning races and competing for podiums every weekend, you’d be hard-pressed going into this season to find a knowledgeable soul with the conviction to look past these two drivers, and say with sincerity that Ericsson would be ahead of them once half the season’s points had been dished out. Yet that is the state of play with nine of the 17 races remaining.
Sure, Ericsson got his first taste of victory in IndyCar last year. Twice, actually, and both under unusual and fortunate circumstances. He drove consistently enough throughout the season to show he could at least hang with IndyCar’s elite talents. And even if he never wins another race from this moment forward, he’ll always have his name and likeness engraved on the Borg-Warner Trophy as a winner of the Indy 500.
Of course, it helps to have a boost in the form of earning 108 out of 293 points scored by winning the Indy 500, which pays not only double points to everyone who starts the race (100 for the winner excluding lead lap bonuses), but also to the top 12 qualifiers. Any full-time driver with serious aspirations of competing for the title will gladly take those extra points. Palou and Dixon sure would have loved the 100-plus for winning the biggest race on the calendar.
But since winning the 500, Ericsson has followed up with a seventh-place finish in Detroit, and a second-place finish in Road America. Early into this post-500 stretch of the IndyCar calendar, he is doing what he needs in order…
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