‘Unleashing the Dragon’ uncorks big emotions for Marcus Ericsson, team in reliving Indy 500

INDIANAPOLIS – During each IndyCar offseason, Marcus Ericsson and race engineer Brad Goldberg spend a week reliving every race weekend of the previous year.

Either in person or over videoconferencing, the Chip Ganassi Racing duo take a deep dive into all the setup and strategy decisions they made in practice, qualifying and the race. They dissect every minute detail that had a positive or negative impact on their No. 8 Dallara-Honda.

They naturally had been saving the 2022 Indianapolis 500 for last heading into this season, but they wound up reviewing the race separately this time.

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And this time, their debrief will be shared with the world in an hourlong documentary.

“Unleashing the Dragon” offers a behind-the-scenes retelling of how Ericsson won the biggest race of his career – relying heavily on commentary from Ericsson, Goldberg and support engineer Angela Ashmore to peel back the layers on the myriad twists of fate that landed them in the winner’s circle.

“Of course, I watched the ending, but I’d never actually sat down and walked through the race – stint by stint, pit stop by pit stop, lap by lap,” Goldberg told NBC Sports about his sitdown for the film. “To go through the whole day, even what time I got there in the morning, was pretty neat, because I hadn’t really processed that yet.

“And winning that race was a childhood dream of mine. When you’re in the moment, it seems like you’re making the right decisions, but the blinders are on. It made sense at the time, but then to see it unfold globally in the race this way.

“It was a good time just to sit and understand how it happened. It was a good day.”

Ericsson, of course, is the main character in