INDIANAPOLIS â Santino Ferrucci was in tears after last Sundayâs 107th Indy 500.
The AJ Foyt Racing driver from Woodbury, Connecticut had just driven the best race of his career, only to have the final yellow flag of the race fly just a second or two before he would have been in position for the win.
The field had just been given the green flag with four laps to go and Ferrucci was charging in the No. 14 Chevrolet into Turn 1, about to pass both Josef Newgarden for second place, which would have put him in prime position to draft past Marcus Ericsson for the victory.
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But IndyCar race control issued the third red flag stoppage in the final 15 laps of the race and with Ferrucci 2 inches behind Newgardenâs Chevrolet, he was lined up third.
When IndyCar had the remaining drivers refire the engines for three-quarters of a lap behind the Pace Car followed by a one-lap green and white flag dash to the finish, Ferrucci knew there was little he could do to get past the front two cars.
Newgarden passed Ericsson on the backstretch and went on to take the checkered flag for his first Indianapolis 500 victory. Ericsson was just 0.0974-of-a-second away from winning the Indy 500 for the second year in a row and Ferrucci was 0.5273-of-a-second away from winning his first career NTT IndyCar Series race.
It was a fantastic effort for Ferrucci, but to come so close to winning the biggest race in the world, the kid from Connecticut was heartbroken.
âWe were so good this month,â Ferrucci told NBC Sports after climbing out of his car. âWhen you are that fast all month long, you just want it that much more. The way we did everything to finish the race under green, itâs great for the fans, IndyCar did the right thing, but sometimes itâs a tough pill to swallow restarting third like that when you are really second.
âItâs all timing and scoring. That doesnât lie. If it says we are third, we are third. Itâs very bittersweet.â
When Ericsson and Newgarden were both âUnleashing the Dragonâ with the draft-breaking zigzag moves at the end of the race, Ferrucci admitted he was hoping it would play into his favor if those two made contact ahead of him.
âI was hoping and praying because when you are third, thatâs all you can do â hope and pray,â Ferrucci said.
His prayers were not answered, but his determination to win the Indianapolis 500 remains undeterred.
He has never finished outside of the top 10 in the Indianapolis 500. Ferrucci was seventh as a rookie in 2019, fourth in 2020, sixth in 2021, 10th last year and third this past Sunday.
âI love this place,â the driver said. âI love coming here. Iâm always so comfortable in the race. We are good at avoiding all of the accidents that happened in front of us.
âWe will win it eventually. We have to.â
Ferrucci has proven he likes to rise to the big moments.
âI like the pressure,â he said. âWe do well under pressure.
âBut you have to take third, sometimes.
âWe had a really good shot at winning this race. We made the most of it.â
Ferrucci continues to display the uncanny knack for racing hard and avoiding trouble. When he took the lead in the No. 14 car made famous by his team owner, legendary four-time Indianapolis 500 winner AJ Foyt, many of the fans in the crowd of 330,000 roared with approval.
Ferrucci was in front for 11 laps and was in prime position to pounce at the end, before the final 15 laps brought out red flag fever.
Because of that, and the timing of where he was when the last yellow light came on before the final red, put him in a difficult position to win the race.
âItâs just emotional, bittersweet,â he said. âIt was emotional getting in the car, which was kind of strange because you feel like thereâs a lot of people that really want this, the team really wants this.
âWe worked so hard to be where we were. We ran out front all day long. Itâs definitely one of the more difficult races that Iâve probably ever run, and just we also knew that we had a really good car.
âWe got really close with Felix Rosenqvist when he was wrecking so very thankful, we were able to avoid that. And then yeah, coming to the end, I think on the second to final restart, me and Marcus battling it into 1, and obviously it going red when it did, itâs part of this place, itâs part of racing, itâs part of the Speedway.
âIâm just bummed. Iâm sure Marcus Ericsson thinks the same thing I do.
âAll three of us could have won it at any point in time.
âYeah, itâs bittersweet.â
A few days have passed since Ferrucci was crying when he got out of the race car. He celebrated his birthday on Wednesday by mowing his lawn after a 12-hour drive back to his home in Texas. On Thursday morning, he flies to Detroit to get ready for this weekendâs Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix on the streets of downtown Detroit.
It has given him a chance to reflect on the biggest weekend of his career.
âEverybody saw on national television I was basically crying,â Ferrucci said. âItâs just one of those competitor things in you that there was so much riding on that race, and it was going so well up until that â it finished really well.
âIt wasnât just pressure to perform but emotional pressure to just be there and to know that we probably had that race won, had it gone yellow two seconds later, itâs just kind of heartbreaking. But still, at the end of the day, you come home in third, to join Helio Castroneves and one other driver, (Harry Hartz, who finished second, second, fourth, fourth and second from 1922-1926), in five of your first five starts in top 10s. And, then you really start to look at what youâve accomplished at the 500 in your first five starts with four different teams and what you did with A.J. Foyt â what weâve done at AJ Foyt Racing, who hasnât had a podium or top 3 since the year 2000 at the Speedway.
âThere are so many positives, and that day could have been so much worse. We had so many close calls between pit lane and some of the crashes on track that at the end of the day I was just really, really happy.
âI went to bed that night knowing that I did the best I could, the team did the best they could, and thatâs the track.â
Ferrucci stressed that he didnât have a problem with IndyCar race control doing everything in their power to make sure the race finished the distance under green.
âThe way that IndyCar finished under green was 100 percent correct for the fans,â Ferrucci said. âIt didnât affect anything for me. What affected me wasnât the red, it was the yellow.
âThe second it went yellow, had it gone yellow two seconds later had they waited, which you canât wait when youâre crashing, so thereâs nothing you can do, I was in third, I was about 6 inches behind Newgarden, and thatâs very clear in the video.
âAt the end of the day, nothing changed for me. The fact that they actually went red and restarted the race gave me that opportunity to win again. I just didnât have a great restart because itâs chaotic when you just go. Youâve got to also remember thereâs no restart zone.
âAt that point when youâre going green for one lap, it was really cool to see the shootout, Iâm not going to lie, but you know that theyâre going green, so you were literally at the hands of the leader on a completely random â you could start going into 3 in the middle of 3 and 4 out of 4. He could start the race whenever he wanted to start the race instead of in the zone, so it was completely unpredictable.
â(Ericsson) had a really good jump, and I did not. Thatâs what took me out of the win at the end of the race. It had nothing to do with IndyCar or the red in my opinion.â
Ferrucci and rookie teammate Benjamin Pedersen helped put a smile on 88-year-old AJ Foytâs face in what started as the one of the saddest months of Foytâs life after his wife of 68 years, Lucy, died.
Foyt returned to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway dealing with grief, but for the past three weeks, he was able to see his racing team return to prominence.
âI think he was really proud,â Ferrucci said of Foyt. âThereâs truly two people that understood my emotions and felt my emotions on Sunday. A.J. was one, and Michael Cannon (his engineer) was the other.
âIf you look at some of the photos from that day, you can kind of see it in my eyes, just â you really have to have it in your hands and then lose it in your hands to kind of understand that feeling of when you work that hard. You have to understand youâre coming from a team with two cars, a budget thatâs a quarter of the size of Penske and Ganassi, and thatâs all month long. We wanted it probably that much more than everybody else that day.
âTo come up that short, A.J.âs finished second and third on dominant days in the â70s, and he talked about those races, where we had the car to win. We were by far the best car at the end of that race. Once the Team McLarens were out of it and the 10 car and the 21 had the incident in pit lane, that left us.
âWe were the car to win, and yeah, just sitting third knowing thereâs nothing you can do, after all that hard work, yeah, itâs a feeling that very few people would understand.
âBut he was incredibly proud of I think what the organization accomplished. Iâm very proud of Larry and what Larry Foyt has done with the team because Larry has had control of this team since 2007, and to see him get his first podium as a team boss and team owner at the speedway was huge.
âI think everybody was incredibly proud of what weâve accomplished.â
Follow Bruce Martin on Twitter at @BruceMartin_500Â
