Ferrucci celebrates Road America P3 with Sexton family...and a beer

Santino Ferrucci was visibly moved after securing a podium with the No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevy that wore a tribute livery to the late Marlyne Sexton, who passed last week. Through her Sexton Properties real estate and development business, the car Ferrucci’s driven since 2023 has been mostly funded by Sexton, and her belief in the Connecticut native was a big  motivation behind the team signing him to a multi-year contract.

Landing on the podium for the second time in three races and earning his fifth top five result over the last four events was everything he’d hoped to deliver in memory of Sexton, and while her daughters were in attendance at Road America to see it happen.

“I didn't know her late husband (Joe, who died in 2002), but also was a very big AJ fan and helped AJ back in the day,” Ferrucci said. “Marlyne has been on the car since I've been driving for AJ Foyt and for Larry [Foyt], and obviously I would not have had a full season ride without Larry and her support, and what they've accomplished last year – where we've brought this team all the way from barely making Leader Circle to top 10 in the points, fighting for top fives consistently...

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“Her support [has] been behind us, so I'm very honored to be running that car with her riding along this weekend. To have the daughters here this weekend, as well, Tracy and Nicole, was pretty amazing on the grid. It was hard not to be emotional about it. It's someone that was family to the team had passed away last week. Looking forward to her memorial next week and celebration of life, and I'm just happy she was riding on board with us today to witness some greatness.”

Few IndyCar drivers have been hotter than Ferrucci since the Indianapolis 500 where he took fifth, then improved to second at Detroit, claimed fifth at World Wide Technology Raceway, and closed June with third at Road America. The surge propelled Ferrucci to 11th in the championship, all while adapting to learning to work with a new race engineer this season in Michael Armbrester, and then with Armbrester’s promotion, learning to work with another new race engineer in Adam Kolesar.

Significant changes like these can take a year or more to allow engineer and driver to jell, but in both instances, Ferrucci and Armbrester, and now Ferrucci and Kolesar found something special while tuning the No. 14 Chevy.

“Me and Michael were working together all the way through to about Detroit, so Michael got promoted to technical director and he's still on my stand and calls my races, and now my new race engineer is Adam Kolesar, so a little bit weird to have an engineering switch in the middle of the season, but we went fifth, second, fifth, third, so I'd say it's going pretty good. I think we've found some really good baselines, and I'm looking forward to the second half of the season together.”

Ferrucci ended his day in style after parking the car at the end of the front straight – it didn’t have enough fuel to complete the cooldown lap – and was rewarded in the 96-degree heat with bottles of water being tossed over the fence by fans and, finally, a beer to quench his thirst. The beer lasted a matter of seconds in Ferrucci’s hand…

“They offered, and I had asked for Spotted Cow since we're here, but they gave me, I believe it was a Miller,” he said.“I've been learning my shotgunning skills from the Chili Bowl, so if I did okay I'm happy with that. Giving my dirt racing guy some credit.”