Marcus Ericsson, the defending Indianapolis 500 winner, defeated Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward to win the 2023 NTT IndyCar Series season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in dramatic fashion on Sunday (March 5).
Coming to the start-finish line with three laps to go, O’Ward exited turn 14 less than a second ahead of Ericsson when he overcorrected and the No. 5 Chevy suddenly slowed.
The engine quickly returned to full strength, but wasn’t enough to stop the momentum of Ericsson, as the Swede took the lead and held it for the final three laps. Scott Dixon had to settle for third, while Alexander Rossi finished a very distant fourth. Callum Ilott, for underdog Juncos Hollinger Racing, rounded out the top five.
“Obviously, that’s racing,” Ericsson unapologetically said in victory lane when talking about the pass for the win. “You know, I feel bad for Pato for having an issue. But that’s racing and he needs to get to the finish line. We had such a good weekend, car was fantastic all the way through. We were hunting him down, putting the pressure on him. That’s when things happened … It was a helluva start to the season.”
“We did everything right today,” O’Ward said in his own interview with NBC. “Just, ugh. There’s always something. The boys deserve that … Dallas is next. So we’ll fight for that one … Compared to where we were last year, we took a massive step. We just gave that one away.”
For much of the day, the race seemed like it would come down to Scott McLaughlin and Romain Grosjean. But a late-race incident cleared the way for a different driver to take the win.
On lap 72, McLaughlin came out of pit road during the final round of pit stops just ahead of Grosjean for the lead, but on cold tires. Exiting turn 3, Grosjean was able to pull even with the Kiwi on his full-temperature Firestones.
Both drivers entered turn 4 side-by-side. McLaughlin had a slight lock-up under braking and collided with Grosjean, driving both drivers into the wall. Grosjean was not able to continue the race and McLaughlin lost a lap and was given a drive-through penalty for causing an accident.
The very first lap of the race was a harbinger of what was to come. There was a full-course caution that led into a 20-minute red flag after a massive crash on the exit of the third turn. Devlin DeFrancesco briefly went fully airborne after a horrible hit by rookie Benjamin Pederson. Thankfully,…
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