Marcus Ericsson suffered a hard crash in the final session of the Unser IndyCar Open Test at Phoenix Raceway on Wednesday.
The 35-year-old Swedish native had begun the last hour of the day’s running and went through Turn 4 as the backend of his No. 28 Andretti Global Honda broke loose. Despite his best efforts to make the save, the car drifted back up and the right side hit the wall before coming to rest just past the start/finish line of the 1-mile tri-oval.
Ericsson reacts
Ericsson just hit the wall in front of me.
— Joey Barnes (@JoeyBarnes85) February 18, 2026
Backend got loose and he almost had it saved nearly.. don't know if it was the result of moisture or not (it's began sprinkling right as he hit) #IndyCar pic.twitter.com/mutVocUiWd
The 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner was able to get out of the car under his own power. He returned to the garage as his beat up machine arrived courtesy of the tow truck, where he apologized to his entire team but was left unsure what happened to cause the crash.
“We need to look at the data, but it was something, it was like a pop and I lost power on the sort of critical part of the corner,” Ericsson said. “So, yeah, I need to look at the data and video to sort of understand what happened there. But yeah, something didn't do what it normally does there and it's just not the right place for that to happen on a Q [qualifying] sim.”
Intermittent rain showed up prior to the start of the last session, and lingered with spot shower sprinkles throughout. With that said, Ericsson did not attribute the crash to the rain.
“No, it wasn't moisture,” he said. “It was something else.”
Overall, the wreck puts a damper on what was an otherwise good start of preseason testing for Ericsson. He’ll try to put the incident behind him and start off on a positive note in the season-opening Streets of St. Petersburg, site of his last IndyCar win, next week.
“It's just really annoying because I felt like Sebring was really strong, this was really strong, and then you have a big crash,” Ericsson said. “It just really pisses me off. But yeah, we get it together and then we go to St. Pete next week.”
