Ericsson wins inaugural IndyCar Markham race
The Swede ended a 63-race drought with a brilliant late charge, leaving Grosjean heartbroken and Power stunned at his own result.
Marcus Ericsson wins the inaugural IndyCar Markham race, and he did it in the most emphatic way possible: having made his last pit stop far later than his principal rivals.
The Andretti Global driver charged from fifth to first, passing teammate Will Power, Alex Palou and erstwhile leader Romain Grosjean to claim a brilliant win, his first since 2023, in IndyCar’s inaugural Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham.
Markham ends a 63-race winless streak for Ericsson. Three years. Sixty-three races. That is a long time to wait when you know you have the pace.
How Ericsson wins the inaugural IndyCar Markham race
Ericsson stayed at the front of the field for the lion’s share of the race and elected to pit just twice. The strategy was bold: Ericsson made his final pit stop on Lap 69, handing the lead to the driver of Dale Coyne Racing’s No. 18 BMax Honda, then maneuvered through the field from seventh place and passed Grosjean for the lead in Turn 6. With five laps left on the clock, it was done.
The margin of victory was 7.5 seconds. That is not a close race. That is a driver on a completely different tyre life to everyone around him, a fact the data confirmed lap by lap as Ericsson ate into Grosjean’s advantage at a rate nobody around the Coyne pit wall had planned for.
“It’s been long enough, but we worked so hard and the #28 crew was fantastic,” said Ericsson. “We’ve had such a good year and we’ve been working every weekend getting stronger and stronger, qualifying up the front every weekend. We might not have got the results we deserve every weekend but I really felt like we deserved it.”
Fresh off a contract extension with Andretti Global, this was the perfect statement of intent heading into the second half of the season.
The pole-sitter error that changed everything
Louis Foster started from the pole position, turning a lap time of 1:13.238. He was the fastest driver all weekend. Foster started on the pole and had the best car; however, he wrecked while passing Ericsson for the effective lead. One moment of misjudgement on a circuit with zero forgiveness and the entire race script was torn up.
The brand new street circuit in Markham, a suburb about 30 kilometres north of downtown Toronto, proved tricky for even the series’ most experienced drivers.
“It’s a really fun track here, but it’s really challenging, especially with the pavement being very high grip in the racing line, but off line it’s quite slick,” Ericsson said after the race.
That delta between the racing line and the rest of the circuit was the hidden factor behind almost every incident on the day.
Grosjean heartbreak: six runner-up finishes and counting
For Romain Grosjean, Markham will sit alongside a painful list. Grosjean followed in second, earning his sixth career runner-up finish and seventh podium while now 0-77 in his attempts to reach IndyCar Victory Lane. He led 28 laps. He executed his strategy better than almost anyone. It was not enough.
Grosjean, who has 10 podium finishes in Formula 1, has not won in an open-wheeled car since he stood on the top step of the podium in the feature race at Hungary during the 2011 GP2 season. That is a fact that lands harder when you consider how close he came on Sunday. The official IndyCar paddock report noted that Grosjean “cried a little” after the defeat, which tells you everything you need to know about what this one meant to him.
Will Power’s charge from last to podium
If Grosjean’s story was the emotional gut punch of the day, Will Power’s was the tactical masterclass that nobody quite saw coming. Two-time NTT IndyCar Series champion Will Power admitted that he didn’t expect to finish on the podium in the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy at Markham after a spin in qualifying forced him to start from the back of the grid.
Good pace, wise strategy, decisive passes and largely staying out of trouble in a frequently chaotic race took him toward the front of the field. Power clawed his way from 25th on the grid to score his fourth third place of the season. “I don’t know how we ended up there,” he admitted. “Actually we had a really good car on restarts. Definitely made a lot of positions there. Then it was about making good strategy calls. At the end there you had to make a lot of passes to move yourself forward, which we were able to do.”
Alex Palou finished fourth and Pato O’Ward fifth, with Palou’s result particularly notable given that Palou made it to round two of qualifying but then found the barrier, suffering heavy damage.
What Markham’s debut has done for IndyCar in Canada
The first race on Markham’s new street course had a bit of everything, including six cautions, trouble for the race favorites, and nearly a first time winner. The race featured a total of eight DNFs, and 14 drivers finished on the lead lap. That is a brutal attrition rate even by street circuit standards.
What matters beyond the drama is the signal this race sends. IndyCar now has a street race in the Greater Toronto Area, one of North America’s largest motorsport markets.
The circuit will need refinement, the walls need radius, and the run-off philosophy needs rethinking before next year. But the raw material is there for a genuinely special venue on the calendar.
The next round is on 23 August at the Streets of Washington D.C. Keep up with how the championship shapes up ahead of the finale with our confirmed 2027 IndyCar season schedule, and if you want more context on how open-wheel racing’s biggest stars are navigating the second half of a packed year, our look at F1’s second half title picture is well worth your time.
