Ericsson Denies Grosjean to End 63-Race Drought as Markham’s Debut Delivers Record Chaos

Marcus Ericsson ended a 63-race winless drought at the Markham IndyCar 2026, hunting down Will Power, Alex Palou and Romain Grosjean in a late-race charge to win the series’ first ever visit to the Ontario street circuit. Ericsson came out of his final pit stop on Lap 69 in seventh place and tore through the field, taking the lead for good on Lap 86. Grosjean led 28 laps and finished second, his best result since Barber in 2023. Power finished third, giving Andretti Global two cars inside the top three. Palou started outside the top ten for the first time in 30 races and still finished fourth, stretching his championship lead to 133 points after both Kyle Kirkwood and Louis Foster crashed out at Turn 3. Six cautions and 258 on-track passes, 242 for position, set a record for the Ontario event whose history stretches back to the first Toronto street race in 1986.

Key Points: Markham IndyCar 2026

• Marcus Ericsson wins the inaugural Indy at Markham 2026, his fifth career victory, ending a 63-race winless run stretching back to St Petersburg in 2023
• Romain Grosjean finishes second, his best result since Barber in 2023, after leading 28 laps and running for the win into the closing stages
• Six cautions and 25 caution laps define a chaotic street circuit debut, with Kyle Kirkwood and Louis Foster both crashing out at Turn 3
• Alex Palou finishes fourth despite starting outside the top ten for the first time in 30 races, stretching his championship lead to 133 points over Kirkwood
• Ericsson’s winning move: staying out to Lap 69 before charging from seventh to the lead, passing Power, Palou and Grosjean in the space of 17 laps
• Four races remain in 2026. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington DC is next

Before the Lights

Louis Foster started from pole, the second of his career after Road America last year. Christian Lundgaard lined up second, Scott McLaughlin third, Ericsson fourth, Dennis Hauger fifth. Ninety laps of a brand new 12-turn, 2.1-mile street circuit, a track nobody in the field had raced on before Friday.

Foster’s Early Lead and the Caution That Cost Him

Foster controlled the opening phase completely. He led every lap from one to thirty-two and built the gap to nearly three seconds. A maiden win was real. Then the race turned against him. A caution fell just after his pit window closed, and with the rest of the front runners cycling through their stops a couple of laps earlier, Foster dropped from the lead to twelfth in the space of one neutralisation. He was not done. He clawed back eight positions and was closing on Ericsson for third when his race ended at Turn 3.

Turn 3: Foster and Kirkwood

Foster went to the inside at Turn 3 on Lap 43, clipped the left-side wall, and was fired almost head-on into the concrete barrier on the right. A major shunt. He walked away from it uninjured, but his race was over on the spot, forty-two laps completed, classified twenty-second. The caution his crash triggered ran seven laps, the longest neutralisation of the afternoon.

The same stretch of track claimed Kyle Kirkwood later in the race. Running third behind his two Andretti Global teammates, Kirkwood’s impact at Turn 3 was just as fierce. He was classified twenty-first, fifty-three laps completed, and the result cost him dearly in the championship picture.

Contact wasn’t confined to Turn 3. Mick Schumacher drew the race’s first caution on Lap 15 when he hit the Turn 4 wall. Rookie Dennis Hauger, starting fifth, bumped Christian Rasmussen and then O’Ward on Lap 20, the start of a two-lap slide that dropped him from fifth to twentieth. He later clipped Scott Dixon’s rear tyre at Turn 8, collecting Rasmussen in the process and drawing another caution. Nolan Siegel was handed a drive-through penalty for avoidable contact after striking Josef Newgarden’s car at the Turn 5 hairpin. Six cautions in total, twenty-five caution laps, the most turbulent afternoon of the 2026 season so far.

Ericsson’s Charge: Lap 69 to the Flag

Ericsson made his first stop on Lap 30 and stayed patient through the middle of the race, the sort of stint that looked ordinary at the time and turned out to be the entire race. He led briefly from Lap 53, lost it to Power for a single lap at 60, took it back at 61, then made his second and final stop on Lap 69. He came out seventh. From there he simply left the field behind.

The fastest lap of the race came from Ericsson himself, 101.792 mph on Lap 68, the lap immediately before his final stop. Once he rejoined in seventh he set about his teammate Will Power and the leaders ahead of him. His path to the lead ran through Power first, contact between the two at the Turn 5 hairpin as Ericsson pushed for third. Ericsson called the contact unfortunate. Power said he understood it.

Palou went next. Then Grosjean, who had led since Lap 70 and was managing fuel to stay ahead, running the numbers on staying safely clear of Palou behind him rather than defending against a driver who had not been in the picture seventeen laps earlier. Ericsson took the lead for good on Lap 86 and pulled away to win by 7.5305 seconds. Team principal Ron Ruzewski put the strategy call in plain terms.

Grosjean Back on the Podium

Grosjean led 28 laps and came within four laps of what would have been his first ever IndyCar win. Second place is his best finish since Barber Motorsports Park in 2023, and it is his first top five of the entire 2026 season. He had the measure of Palou behind him and knew exactly what margin he needed to protect.

There is a strange footnote to it. Grosjean’s last win in any category came in a GP2 race in Hungary back in 2011. Ericsson finished fifth in that same race. Fifteen years on, the two of them were racing each other for a win again, this time with Ericsson taking it and Grosjean settling for the podium behind him.

Rest of the Field

Power finished third, giving Andretti Global two cars inside the top three. Palou finished fourth from a grid slot outside the top ten for the first time in thirty races, nearly two full seasons, and still gained ground in the championship given what happened behind him. O’Ward took fifth for Arrow McLaren on a three-stop strategy that kept him in touch throughout.

Malukas finished a lap down in seventeenth, and the number alone undersells how his afternoon went. He was running sixth on Lap 83 when he hit the wall, forcing an unscheduled stop the following lap, the fourth of his race. INDYCAR’s post-race coverage has him describing a rear end that had been difficult all day, with Lap 83 marking roughly his sixth brush with the wall, this time bending the tow link. It cost him ground in the championship he can’t get back. He now sits third, 137 points off Palou, with Kirkwood’s crash keeping him within touching distance of second rather than losing more ground.

Official Race Classification: Indy at Markham 2026

Championship Standings: After Round 14

Palou’s lead now sits at 133 points over Kirkwood with four races left. The full 2026 championship standings are updated after every round.

Coffee Corner Take

Ericsson has had to wait sixty three races, with the last one being St Petersburg 2023. He said in the room afterwards that it didn’t surprise him, that the pace had been building all year and results just hadn’t matched it. Fair enough. But there’s a difference between believing you deserve a win and going out and taking one from seventh with twenty one laps to do it in. That’s what he did here.

Twenty-eight laps led, first top five of the season, best finish in three years, and Grosjean read the fuel numbers behind him well enough that he believed he had Palou covered. He did. He just didn’t have Ericsson covered, and nobody else did either.

Six cautions, twenty five caution laps, the most on-track passing the event has produced since the series first raced Toronto’s streets in 1986. Turn 3 claimed Foster and Kirkwood, and Turn 4, 5 and 8 all drew cautions of their own. That’s not a criticism of the layout. New street circuits are always going to punish drivers still learning where the walls are, and Markham clearly gave everyone plenty to learn.

Palou came into this weekend already sitting 110 points clear of Kirkwood. He didn’t need to win it. He needed Kirkwood to have a bad day, and Turn 3 delivered exactly that. Malukas didn’t do himself many favours either, an afternoon that cost him ground of his own. There’s something almost absurd in Palou’s own weekend: his worst qualifying position in nearly two seasons, and he leaves with an even bigger lead than he arrived with, 133 points now. Four races left, and this doesn’t feel like a title fight anymore. It feels like a coronation. The only real question left is when, not if.