Written by Archie O’Reilly
Marcus Ericsson is not someone to shy away from reality. He feels the disappointment of his 2024 IndyCar season and does not hide that.
Joining Andretti Global after four years with Chip Ganassi Racing, Ericsson was on a run of three successive sixth-place championship finishes. So to go winless for the first time in three years and drop nine places to 15th in the standings was a shock to the system.
But the 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner has not allowed himself to get downbeat about how his first season with Andretti panned out. It has since been an off-season of tireless work.
“I’ve changed up quite a few things,” Ericsson said. “I always see the off-season as an opportunity to be better so I always try and look at ways to improve myself as a driver. With last year’s results, it gave me even more motivation to work even harder.
“I’m not a believer in bad luck. I think you make your own luck. I just didn’t do a good enough job last year so I want to make sure I’m better this year.”
Ericsson’s best result was a second-place finish in Detroit but it was a year of subtle peaks and more glaring troughs. There were eight top 10 finishes in 17 races, but otherwise Ericsson finished no higher than 16th and was six times outside the top 20.
Across his three sixth-place-finishing seasons while with Ganassi, Ericsson only finished lower than 12th on six occasions across a 50-race run. That steadiness and consistency he became renowned for diminished in 2024.
But it has served as fuel for Ericsson, who continues to strive to learn new ways to better himself at 34 years old. He has driven his own personal simulator almost daily in the off-season to compensate for the lack of driving time outside the IndyCar season, dusting down a simulator scarcely used since the pandemic in his bid to gain an extra edge.
“You see all these kids these days, they come up in the series and they’re pretty much born and raised in a simulator of some kind,” Ericsson said. “And they seem to all be pretty good. I’m trying to take that up and been working quite hard on that over the off-season.
“It’s not a high-tech simulator that you use like that’s moving around or whatever. It’s just a home simulator that’s pretty advanced. I’m just trying to think of ways to become better. You can go to the gym, you can do your mental trainer, but you can also drive simulators.”
Ericsson has also put in work in the gym and feels “stronger than ever” having gained 10 pounds of muscle during the off-season. He has also held weekly sessions with a mental trainer, which he believes is key for athletes to become their best selves.
“I’ve been working with a mental coach throughout my career,” Ericsson said. “That’s been a part of my routine. Sometimes I worked more or less together with mental coaches. I think this off-season I tried to be ramping it up a little bit more to just focus on getting better, getting mentally stronger.
“I think after a tougher year, I analyse more, I think more: ‘What can I do better?’ That’s one of the things I wanted to work even more on. There’s no specific things - just general things to become stronger in your mind. That translates to when you’re in a race car.”
Ericsson’s work with a mental trainer covers a wide variety of things, both in terms of sporting performance and wider life.
“Depending on how your week is looking, what you’ve been up to, it’s a lot about not only sports specific but also well-being and where your mind is at and why your mind is there, just to help coach you in that,” Ericsson said. “It’s just to get perspective and help me, guide me in everything I do.”
It is IndyCar’s annual media day as Ericsson candidly and openly sheds light on the value of his work with a mental trainer. He believes it remains something that could be embraced further by those in the sporting world.
“I think it’s still a very underappreciated thing in sports,” he said. “Everyone goes to the gym pretty much every day or work on your physical training, but very few do the same thing with the mental side.
“And I think it’s as important, if not more important, the mental side, especially the higher up you get in any sport. You get to a point where everyone is extremely talented and skilled and then you need to find an edge on other things.
“I believe a lot in finding the edge on the mental side.”
Reflecting on the shortcomings of his 2024 season, Ericsson does not believe he was let down by inadequate work ethic or preparation. He is a consummate professional. But his reflections have led to some lessons about where he could still improve.
“You always live and learn,” he said. “I’ve tried to be very honest with myself in the off-season when I’ve been analysing the year and what I could have done better and try and adjust those things and make sure mentally, when I stand there on the grid for the first race or for any race, that I’ve put in every single percent of work I can to be as good as I can be.
“I think that was the biggest lesson from last year, that I feel like I could do things a little bit better on the personal side. And that’s what I’ve tried to do in the off-season and really during the year.
“Being honest to yourself and being honest [with] what you need to improve and work on that, that’s the key for me.”
Ericsson is now a 97-race veteran in both Formula One and IndyCar. As he takes the green flag in St. Pete to commence his seventh season in IndyCar, he will officially have competed in more races stateside than he did during his five-year F1 career.
But despite being at the top of the racing ladder for over a decade, with successes including victory in the Indy 500 three years ago, Ericsson is never content to settle.
“If you work hard and always look what you can do better, I believe you always get better,” he said. “If you put in that work and take that with your experience from the previous years, you should always become better.
“That’s how I always see myself. I’m 34 this year and I feel like every year I get better and better. That’s my mindset. With the experience last year, you could say it was a bit of a character-building year.”
The low point of Ericsson’s 2024 was the Indy 500. Only the year prior, he was within one lap of becoming the first driver to defend his crown at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in two decades before a last-lap pass from Josef Newgarden.
As Ericsson watched Newgarden achieve the back-to-back feat in 2024 with yet another final-lap overtake, he was reeling from a torrid Month of May. A heavy crash in Thursday practice led to a chassis replacement, with the non-superspeedway-refined back-up car not delivering the speed of the primary car.
Ericsson was forced to qualify for the race through Last Chance Qualifying, starting down in 32nd after becoming accustomed to being a front-runner in recent years. He had not even turned half-a-lap when he was then caught up in an opening-lap incident to end his race.
“That Month of May probably aged me five or 10 years,” he said. “Things like that - when things go against you - it’s the biggest opportunity to learn and become better. I really think that that season we had last year, it made us come together more as a group and gave me a lot of strength.”
Ericsson heads into the 2025 season with a renewed and refreshed outlook. He takes solace from the fact that it has previously taken testing first seasons with teams before he hits his stride, as was the case at Ganassi with a 12th-place championship finish in his first season.
“The potential is sky high there with the group we’re with,” Ericsson said. “That makes me really excited about this season. It does remind me a lot of my first year in Ganassi. I came from Schmidt Peterson and it was a bit of a scrappy year - a lot of potential there but not so many results.
“And then in year two I won races, finished on the podium multiple times and finished sixth in the championship. I see a lot of similarities there. And throughout my career, I’ve always been that kind of guy that needs a year to get to know things and get to know people.
“I get the most out of myself when I feel comfortable with the people I’m working with and know things that are going on. Some drivers can just jump in anything and just be fast from the get-go and that’s for sure a strength. But throughout my career, that’s always been a thing for me that I need a year to get used to things.
“And then I can deliver.”
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