Ericsson tops final day of IndyCar's Sebring test

Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward was the fastest driver throughout most of the second and final day of NTT IndyCar Series preseason testing at Sebring International Raceway, but he was supplanted by Team Penske’s Will Power who looked like he’d hold onto the top spot until Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson shot to P1 with the No. 28 Honda in the final minutes of the afternoon session.

The Swede’s 51.951s lap also served as the fastest across both days, which had his former teammate Alex Palou and the Chip Ganassi Racing team in charge on Monday with a 52.088s lap in the No. 10 Honda.

"It was super-positive," Ericsson told RACER. "It's only testing for sure, but I think the main thing for me is the whole winter, every time I've been in the car, all the work the Andretti team put in in the winter... I feel like they made some good steps on the package. We're fast, there's no doubt about it.

"But I think that the most impressive thing is we had a really productive day. My race engineer Olivier (Boisson) showed the test list of items he wanted to test, and I was like, 'Good luck getting through all that!' And we actually did everything on the test list. And that doesn't happen often. I've got to give credit to the 28-car crew. They did a really good job today with all the changes we made and I think we get a lot of important information for the rest of the year."

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Ericsson just cleared Power’s No. 12 Chevy (52.007s, +0.056s), O’Ward’s No. 5 Chevy (52.010s, +0.059s), and Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist in the No. 60 Honda (52.030s, +0.079s), all of whom were less than a tenth shy of the Andretti drivers. The only other driver who was close to Ericsson was Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Graham Rahal in fifth with the No. 15 Honda (52.059s, +0.108s).

After Rahal, it was a pair of strong Ganassi rookies in Kyffin Simpson with the No. 4 Honda (52.167s, +0.216s) and Linus Lundqvist in the No. 8 Honda (52.190s, +0.239s), and from eighth to 10th it was A.J. Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci (52.204s, +0.253s), Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Romain Grosjean in the No. 78 Chevy (52.271s, +0.320s), and Ganassi’s Marcus Armstrong in the No. 11 Honda (52.276s, +0.325s).

Closing out the group, Ed Carpenter Racing rookie Christian Rasmussen was 11th in the No. 20 Chevy (52.406s, +0.455s), and Colin Braun in 12th who, on his first day in an Indy car, went faster in the No. 51 Honda (52.916s, +0.965s) than Dale Coyne Racing testing teammate Jack Harvey managed on Monday in the same afternoon session in the No. 18 DCR Honda (53.076s, +0.160s to Braun).

Coyne has yet to name its drivers for the opening round, and Arrow McLaren also needs to confirm its stand-in for the injured David Malukas in the No. 6 Chevy.

IndyCar teams will have just over one week to tear down, rebuild, and dispatch their cars for the paddock at St. Petersburg and for the March 8-10 start to the 2024 season.

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