How do you say perseverance in Swedish?

Marcus Ericsson was a bust.

Signed by Andretti Global to his first paying contract as a professional driver, Ericsson inked a three-year deal to replace the combative Romain Grosjean in the No. 28 Honda in 2024. Positivity was high, as were expectations for Ericsson to get more from the car than his predecessor.

It didn’t happen.

Buyer’s remorse was the main takeaway from his debut with Andretti. Ericsson and renowned race engineer Olivier Boisson should have formed an epic duo, as both brought significant pedigrees to the team. But they never connected in the driver-to-engineer way that makes almighty speed. They landed one podium in the No. 28 car, and that was the only highlight of the season as his former Chip Ganassi Racing team ran away with the championship.

To make his reputational matters worse, Ericsson finished 15th in the Drivers’ standings, far removed from the sixth-place position he achieved the year before in a Ganassi car.

In front of Ericsson, he had Ganassi sophomore Marcus Armstrong earning 14th, and he was hemmed in by Ganassi Rookie of the Year Linus Lundqvist in 16th. By all accounts, Ericsson’s choice to leave IndyCar’s dominant team for a sizable paycheck had backfired.

Or was the situation even more dire: Did the self-motivated exodus reveal his true position in the field? Ericsson wasn’t particularly close to Alex Palou and Scott Dixon during his time at Ganassi, but he was a significant contributor as a winning member of its leading trio. And that changed in an instant at Andretti as new teammates Colton Herta took second and Kyle Kirkwood placed seventh in the standings while Ericsson was buried in the bottom half of the field.

Leaving 2024, and to underscore how poorly Ericsson’s opening salvo went with Andretti, it was hard to ignore how the embattled Grosjean did better and took the same car to 13th in the championship in 2023.

Ericsson was a four-time winner with Chip Ganassi Racing, including the 2022 Indy 500 (above). But a desire to become a paid driver rather than a paying one prompted a move to Andretti for 2024. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Through his countryman and longtime backer Finn Rausing, Ericsson reached the heights of Formula 1 and moved onto IndyCar, first with Arrow McLaren, and then with Ganassi, where Rausing continued to underwrite the expenses associated with running him. He’d gone from backmarker F1 teams to a quality midfield IndyCar program, and then onto the best in the field. It was a remarkable arc, all made possible through Rausing.

At Ganassi, Ericsson won, and won again, and again, and once more, taking the 2022 Indianapolis 500 as the crowning achievement in a career that had never known anything like the heights or respect that comes with victory at the Speedway.

And during the years in F1 and IndyCar prior to Andretti, he was receiving a small stipend to live on each year – small for Indy 500 winners, at least, but many times more than the average person takes home – and that’s where one lingering strand of disrespect was felt. Being received in a new light; not as a driver who brought funding, but as a front-running talent worthy of being hired to drive a car with a budget sourced by the Ganassi team, Ericsson and Ganassi reached an impasse.

It was at Andretti, which had lost or released its veteran drivers, where an Indy 500-winning driver of Ericsson’s caliber held extraordinary value. For the first time, and after years of asking Ganassi to be switched from paying to paid, a serious salary was offered, and one that was commensurate with his stature as a top-six championship performer.

But those performances didn’t carry over at Andretti in 2024, or in 2025 when, after another slow start, the situation took a turn for the worse. Boisson was reassigned to a behind-the-scenes role by mid-summer and replaced with the respected Dave Seyffert. Ericsson and Seyffert held promise, but the damage was already done; the season ended with no podiums and an inconceivable drop to 20th in the championship.

Ericsson’s three-year deal would be honored, which meant Ericsson could count on returning for one more run in a top team when 2026 arrived, but based on his first and second seasons with Andretti, he was staring at a future of Indy-only invitations after watching his full-time career collapse next to Kirkwood and Herta.

To fully grasp the severity of the matter, Andretti went as far as farming its new Indy NXT champion Dennis Hauger out to Dale Coyne Racing for 2026. It would commit most of the necessary budget for the Norwegian to learn and prepare himself to replace Ericsson in 2027. He wasn’t being paid millions of dollars per year to barely scrape into the top 20, and when a team decides to plan for your departure in the second of a three-year deal, you know the end is near.

The team also made another engineering change – the third for Ericsson in the No. 28 car – with Ron Barhorst who, for those who follow such things, was a fascinating name to introduce during what was meant to be Ericsson’s farewell tour.

Barhorst had been with Andretti for many years, serving in assistant race engineering roles to some of its best drivers, and finally, as a race engineer within its Indy NXT program and at the IndyCar level through the former technical alliance with Meyer Shank Racing and with Andretti’s IndyCar entry for Devlin DeFrancesco.

New year, new focus. Ericsson came into 2026 knowing he needed a turnaround, and put some early points on the board with his first career pole at Arlington. Mike Levitt/Getty Images

He was a faithful employee who covered a lot of ground moving among different series and teams for Andretti. Rarely paired with a driver whose talents or experience would accelerate his own development curve as a high-level race engineer, he was assigned to what could have been another hopeless situation with Ericsson. Instead, the two found each other at the perfect time.

Ericsson had it easy at Ganassi where the winningest team of the 2020s provided him with a car and crew that allowed him to place sixth in the championship for three straight seasons. But there was an absence of that same ease at Andretti. Its cars behaved in a different manner, and despite all of the efforts with Boisson and Seyffert, only modest progress was made to tailor the No. 28 to his liking. All while Ericsson’s new teammates thrived and won and stayed somewhat close to Palou in the standings.

Shift to the offseason of 2025, and Ericsson was acutely aware of how ready Andretti was to move on and pair Hauger with Kirkwood and newcomer Will Power as soon as it was contractually possible to say goodbye. Credit Ericsson’s willingness to be honest – to recognize how close he was to losing everything he’d created for himself – with the ensuing decision to change his outlook on 2026.

He worked harder with the team, and his new engineer, to identify the shortcomings in himself and in the car. Desperation is a powerful motivator, and it inspired Ericsson to assemble a career-turnaround to-do list of sorts that would reignite and reintroduce the Ganassi-era version of Ericsson to the field.

His attitude was in need of adjustment as well. Ericsson’s always had a tangible competitive streak that fuels his driving, but his laid-back personality was a better fit at Ganassi, where the team made life rather simple. Get in the car. Drive the car. Be competitive. That was the gift that came with driving for Chip.

At Andretti, the laid-back approach was a liability. As a first-time employee who was pursued and hired to drive for an unfamiliar organization, and having replaced a stormy and shouty Grosjean, Ericsson’s sensibilities said to try and fit in and make the best out of the situation. He wasn’t wrong for embracing that tactic, but it didn’t work.

And that’s why the “Drive Angry” version of Ericsson was launched in 2026 as a Hail Mary to deliver on what was expected on arrival in 2024. Thankfully for the 35-year-old, it’s worked, and it started working from the first race of the season.

He captured his first IndyCar pole (Arlington), led the most laps (WWTR), and set the fastest race lap twice (Portland and Markham) on the way to claiming his first victory for Andretti at Markham, which was also the first for Barhorst as an IndyCar race engineer. Ericsson was the fastest thing in Markham, and based on all the pace they’ve demonstrated this year, he and Barhorst and their trusty pit crew have ascended to a place where they are a routine challenge for teams to solve.

The two men who were nothing more than a one-year experiment for an outgoing problem formed an instant bond that has taken Ericsson to ninth in the championship and inspired Andretti to release Hauger, cancel the replacement plan, and execute an extension that will keep Ericsson in the No. 28 through 2027.

Considering all he had to lose, Ericsson was wise to look inward for solutions that weren’t arriving on their own. Few would have predicted he’d win a race for Andretti before Power, but that’s what he’s done. Fewer would have bet on Ericsson to be asked to stay and sign a new contract, but that’s what he’s earned.Perseverance, introspection, and self-worth, mixed with a small and steady serving of rage. That’s Ericsson’s “Drive Angry” formula and it’s clearly working. If you’re a fan of redemption stories, they don’t get much better than the one Ericsson’s just authored.