- Marcus Ericsson will share a BMW M4 GT3 with younger brother Hampus and teammate Derek DeBoer at the Indianapolis 8 Hour on October 8 through 11, their first race together at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and only their second as teammates in any car.
- The entry caps a turnaround year for the 2022 Indy 500 winner, who snapped a 63-race winless streak at Markham in August and signed a contract extension with Andretti Global before finishing seventh in the 2026 IndyCar standings.
- Hampus Ericsson, the reigning Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Pro champion, is in his first full GT3 championship season and says sharing a car with his brother at IMS is “something I’ve dreamed about for a long time.”
Two Brothers, One Car, One Famous Speedway
Marcus Ericsson has won the Indianapolis 500. Hampus Ericsson has never turned a lap at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in anger. On October 8, that changes, and it changes with both brothers strapped into the same car.
Random Vandals Racing confirmed this week that the 2022 Indy 500 champion will join his younger brother and full-season driver Derek DeBoer in the No. 99 BMW M4 GT3 EVO for the Indianapolis 8 Hour, the season-ending round of GT World Challenge America and the Intercontinental GT Challenge. The race runs October 8 through 11 on the Indianapolis road course, a layout Marcus knows from IndyCar’s annual visit but has never raced in a GT3 car, and a track Hampus is seeing for the first time regardless of category.
“I’m incredibly excited to join Derek and my younger brother Hampus in the Random Vandals Racing No. 99 BMW,” Marcus said of the entry. “Racing alongside Hampus and sharing a car with him is something I cherish deeply. My extensive experience and knowledge of Indianapolis Motor Speedway will allow me to contribute, though the BMW M4 GT3 will be a new experience for me.”
Hampus, more than a decade younger than Marcus and still building his GT3 resume, put it in more personal terms. “Getting the chance to share the BMW M4 GT3 RVR car with my brother at Indianapolis is something I’ve dreamed about for a long time,” he said. “Marcus knows IMS extremely well, and his experience there will be a huge asset to the team.” Team owner Paul Sparta called landing Marcus for the finale “exciting and an honor,” adding that the IndyCar driver is “really pumped up for the event.”
A Season That Started With Doubt and Ended With a Trophy
The timing says something. Marcus Ericsson spent most of 2024 and 2025 searching for the driver he used to be. He moved to Andretti Global in 2024 after four seasons at Chip Ganassi Racing that included four wins and an Indy 500, only to go 34 starts without a victory and slide to 15th, then 20th, in the championship. He has said plainly that he lost confidence in that stretch and stopped recognizing himself behind the wheel.
This year read differently from the start. Ericsson spent the long IndyCar offseason rebuilding, testing GT3 cars on the side and working with new race engineer Ron Barhorst, who arrived from Indy NXT. “Worked really hard this winter to be better,” Ericsson said early in the year. “It’s an important year for me.” By four races in, he sat eighth in points with 99, well ahead of his pace from a year earlier.
The breakthrough came at Markham, Ontario, in August, where Ericsson passed Romain Grosjean with four laps left to win the inaugural Honda Indy Toronto-area street race, his first checkered flag in 63 races and the fifth of his career. “It’s been long enough,” he said afterward. “But we’ve worked so hard. It doesn’t come as a surprise. We’ve had such a good year and are getting stronger every weekend.” Andretti Global confirmed his contract extension for 2027 that same month, and Ericsson closed the year seventh in the championship with 429 points and 13 top-10 finishes, a result that stands in sharp contrast to the two seasons that came before it.
The Other Ericsson Is Building His Own Resume
Hampus Ericsson’s path has run almost entirely in sports cars rather than open-wheel machinery, and almost entirely out of his older brother’s shadow. He started karting at age seven with Ward Racing, moved into British Formula 4 with Fortec Motorsports in 2017, and took a maiden car-racing win at Snetterton in British Formula 3 in 2019 with Double R Racing. A guest outing in Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia that same year, sharing a grid with 1997 Formula 1 champion Jacques Villeneuve, pointed him toward GT racing for good.
He spent four seasons climbing the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia ladder, improving from fifth in 2020 to third in 2023 with three wins, before switching to Lamborghini’s one-make series in 2024. He won his class at the Lamborghini World Finals that November and carried the momentum into 2025, when he claimed the Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Pro championship with Wayne Taylor Racing. For 2026, Random Vandals Racing signed him and DeBoer to a full GT World Challenge America campaign in the No. 99 BMW, his first season racing a full GT3 championship rather than a one-make series.
From Rivals in Sweden to Teammates in Indiana
The brothers’ racing paths crossed once before in a way that hinted at this week’s reunion. In October 2022, fresh off his Indy 500 win, Marcus entered the Porsche Carrera Cup Scandinavia finale at Mantorp Park in Sweden, his first competitive race in Sweden after leaving as a 16-year-old karter. It was also the first time he raced competitively against Hampus, who was a regular in that series. “It’s great fun to be able to end this incredible season, with the victory in the Indy 500, in front of a Swedish audience at home,” Marcus said at the time, while noting how different the Porsche felt from an IndyCar: lower downforce, a heavier chassis, the engine behind him instead of in front.
Four years later, the brothers are no longer on opposite sides of the grid. Their first race as actual teammates came this past December at the Michelin 12H Malaysia at Sepang International Circuit, where they shared a Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO2. The Indianapolis 8 Hour is their second pairing and their first in a BMW, with DeBoer completing the Pro-Am lineup. It also happens to be the first time either brother has raced at Indianapolis Motor Speedway together, a venue that means considerably more to Marcus’s career than it does, so far, to his brother’s.
A Crowded Grid and What Comes Next
The Ericssons will not be the only IndyCar name at Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month. Five-time series champion Alex Palou is also entered in the Indianapolis 8 Hour, continuing his own habit of mixing GT3 racing into his IndyCar offseasons. For Marcus, the race is a one-off guest appearance before he returns full time to Andretti Global’s No. 28 Honda in 2027 alongside Kyle Kirkwood and Will Power, the contract already signed and the momentum from Markham still fresh. For Hampus, it is the biggest stage of his Pro-Am campaign and a chance to end his rookie GT3 championship season with his brother in the car rather than across the paddock from him.
Neither brother has downplayed what the week means beyond the results sheet. A race that pairs IMS experience with GT3 inexperience, a twelve-year age gap, and a shared last name is, by Hampus’s own description, something he pictured long before Random Vandals Racing made it official. Whatever happens across the eight hours in Speedway, Indiana, the Ericsson family will have put both of its racing drivers in the same cockpit at the same famous track for the first time.
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