IndyCar News: Schumacher says his IndyCar feels like ‘an F2 car
Mick Schumacher (pictured) says he’s finding it easy to adjust to IndyCar racing, thanks to how similar its chassis feels to what he experienced in Formula 2.
The former Haas Formula 1 driver is set to make his IndyCar debut this weekend in the season-opening race.
“It’s an F2 car, just with better tires,” said Schumacher, who clinched the Formula 2 championship back in 2020. Both series rely on single-spec chassis from Dallara, but IndyCar runs on Firestone tires, while F2 uses Pirellis.
IndyCar has stuck with a version of its current DW12 chassis since 2012, with a new model slated for 2028.
“I feel like if we bumped it up with maybe 100 or 200 horsepower more and kept the weight down a little bit, I think that’d be pretty good,” Schumacher told the Off Track with Hinch and Rossi podcast. “And I guess that’s kind of the transition that the future car is going into. So that would be pretty fun to see.”
In the opening practice session at St. Petersburg, Schumacher lapped just one second off the pace set by leader Scott McLaughlin, though that placed him 23rd in the 25-car field.
His switch to IndyCar represents a return to open-wheel racing for the ex-Ferrari Driver Academy member. After losing his F1 seat at Haas at the end of 2022, Schumacher competed for Alpine in the World Endurance Championship through last year.
He explained that he started paying closer attention to IndyCar in 2024. “You grew up learning about it and hearing about it, but it was never really something that I would follow super-closely as time zones and stuff were pretty difficult to match it up with what I was doing anyway at the time,” he said.
“Then the whole situation with F1 became a bit more complicated. More and more teams were reaching out to me [when] I was obviously still in the trajectory of having good conversations with F1 teams and [my] hope was still there to kind of go back.”
Schumacher confirmed his deal with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) last November. He describes the series as feeling more “raw” than the ones he’s raced in before.
“Now coming over here, you learn so much more in detail what it actually means to be driving an IndyCar and how tough it is and challenging it is but also how fun the championship is in itself. The people here are just amazing to work with, they’re really ambitious on the racing side of things.
“It feels very much like a raw motorsport environment, which is rare to find in some places, and I felt like here it was really just obvious that that was the kind of thing that was happening.”