Marcus Ericsson on his dream Indy 500 victory

Freshly-crowned Indianapolis 500 winner and new championship leader Marcus Ericsson of Chip Ganassi Racing joins this week's The Race IndyCar Podcast.

With just a couple of hours sleep after the night of the race, Ericsson outlines how he celebrated the biggest victory of his career, before detailing how his team have supported his success and what he was thinking in the closing stages when he made a crucial victory push overtaking three key cars.

There's more joking about Ericsson's omission from The Race's 2021 mid-season driver rankings from previous shows, and how host Jack Benyon is now a lucky charm for the Swede, after enjoying his first Indy 500 on the ground at the event.

As always co-host JR Hildebrand provides the perfect drivers'-eye guide to the Indy 500 in which he finished 12th for AJ Foyt Racing despite the strategy struggles he explains in more detail.

He analyses why Ericsson's defence was so impressive in the closing stages and why driving Turn 2 at the Speedway - which caught out Jimmie Johnson and Romain Grosjean among others - is just so difficult in the podcast's general race debrief.

Pato O'Ward and Arrow McLaren SP's bittersweet second, Penske's third sub-par Indy 500 win in a row and Andretti's struggles are also part of the breakdown.

Follow The Race on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

Check out our latest videos on YouTube

For IndyCar news, analysis and must-read features visit the-race.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices