For the record, I picked the winner of the Indianapolis 500. Congratulations to Marcus Ericsson and Chip Ganassi Racing.
We would expect Ericsson’s face to be all over the Swedish newspapers, but I had to scroll past soccer and hockey and a tale about puppy smuggling and finally found a perfunctory report in Aftonbladet.
The subhead reads: “Marcus Ericsson trampade gasen i botten.” (Literally, he “held the gas to the bottom.”) Or as Ericsson himself said in a post-race interview, “I was hoping I could keep my foot down. That was my plan. It worked.”
The stunning development was Scott Dixon’s pit-road speeding penalty on the final pit stop with 25 laps to go. Dixon had led 95 laps but ended up 21st. “It’s heartbreaking, to be honest,” he said. A tiny mistake by a great champion determined so much about the race.