No matter what happened, the 2023 Indy 500 was going to have a dramatic finish.
Three red flags came out in the final 16 laps of the race, including one with three laps remaining. Rather than allow the race to finish under a yellow flag, officials called for the red and then one green-flag lap to determine the winner. Marcus Ericsson, the 2022 Indy winner, led on the restart but was passed by Josef Newgarden down the backstretch.
After the race, Ericsson made it clear how he felt about the decision to try to fit in the final lap under green.
"I thought it was an unfair and dangerous end to the race," he told the NBC broadcast. "I don't think it was enough laps to do what we did. Think we've never done a restart out of the pits and we don't get our tires up to temperature."
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Race officials had a decision to make: allow the race to finish under caution over the final three laps, in which case Ericsson would have won, or force him to hold off the field in a restart right out of the pits.
The decision was made to red-flag the race and then bring the cars back out for a 2.5-mile sprint to the finish.
"I feel like we won that race and then it sort of got taken away from us," Ericsson said. "It is what it is. The situation is what it is. I think I did everything right on that last restart. I think that was awesome, but it was not enough today with what we had, so it's tough to swallow."
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Ericsson later congratulated Newgarden for the win.
Congrats @josefnewgarden @Team_Penske . I gave it all. We gave it all. Proud of the 8 crew @CGRTeams and myself. We’ll be back 👊🏻 #ME8 #INDY500
— Marcus Ericsson (@Ericsson_Marcus) May 28, 2023