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.”
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).