“Very calm” Schumacher measured about Indy 500 debut
- Archie O’Reilly
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
Mick Schumacher has taken everything in his stride after his first outing on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) oval during Tuesday’s IndyCar open test.
The German rookie will make his first Indianapolis 500 start next month. But where rookies can be overawed by their first taste of the iconic 2.5-mile superspeedway, Schumacher has exhibited his experience to quickly get comfortable and straight down to business.
“Everything was pretty much as I expected it would be,” he said. “That means that we had a good preparation. Excited to go back and dig through the data and talk about what we need to do on our side to make everything a bit easier for me and we can go even quicker.
“It was obviously interesting to drive, though I would say that a short oval personally was a lot more impressive. Just because in Phoenix when I drove Turn 3 and 4 for the first time, it felt like I could nearly go a proper hard entry. That was pretty impressive.
“Here, you’re driving in a way that you always just try and nurture it through the corner, be as clean as possible. But you never really feel like: ‘Now I can go,’ because everything is flat.”
That said, as composed as he is now, Schumacher is aware of how different things may feel come qualifying, when drivers are given increased horsepower for their four-lap runs.
“I don’t know how it’s going to be once we’re trimming, once we’ve gone through quali power,” he added. “These things are still up for me to understand and learn and see and experience. For now, it’s been very calm and very understanding. It’s just building up that knowledge so that when we get to quali day we’re all settled and good to go.”
Still a novice on ovals, though at least with one start to his name at Phoenix Raceway last month, Schumacher spent half-a-day in the simulator to prepare for his first foray onto the oval at IMS. But there is only so much he was able to learn before experiencing the track.
“The thing is, on a racetrack you always need that respect factor and you don’t really have that in a sim,” he said. “Essentially, the sim was very easy to just drive and go out there.
“Nonetheless, to go through procedures and stuff, the sim is very good just because you can run through the different tools that you have, feel the changes, maybe understand what they might do for you on a track. [But] as a driver, you always want to be on a real track.”
The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team ensured to put Schumacher through something of a preparatory oval testing programme to supplement his rookie campaign. Alongside the initial full-field Phoenix test, he also tested pre-season at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, as well as more recently at World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR).
His first outing at Indianapolis commenced with the customary Rookie Orientation Programme (ROP), designed to showcase an ability to control the car by running within a number of different speed ranges. This felt like a natural first step for Schumacher.
“I probably would have done it anyway, slowly getting in and making my way to the speed,” he admitted. “So I didn’t really feel like I needed a specific target. Actually when I went a bit quicker, people were a bit upset.
“I feel like this is not a totally new experience. I feel like I had a good amount of knowledge of ovals [from testing]. Homestead is the closest it comes to here in some ways. I thought it was very straightforward, very nice for me to get going and get comfortable quickly.”
There was one instance during his ROP that he felt something awry with the car. But already taking onboard the wisdom of those with more experience, he ensured not to take any risks.
“One of those important, key messages that I’ve been told since starting on an oval has always been: ‘Whenever something doesn’t feel right, come in and we’ll fix it,’” he said. “For me in that instance, it just didn’t feel exactly the way it should have.
“It felt a little light on the rear specifically. Rightfully so, we came in and saw that there was an issue on the car. We got that fixed and went out again.”
As alarming as it can be, this sort of moment is something drivers often see as a necessity to experience at the Speedway. Typically, though, Schumacher was not flustered.
“Personally, I’ve always been somebody who is very easy to pick up on things in the car,” he conceded. “I don’t blindly just drive it. I actually try to listen to what the car’s telling me and what I get. Basically, ’trust my butt’ is what we say.
“That’s been the case in Homestead; that’s been the case in Phoenix and also St. Louis [at WWTR]. Even more so, [it is] important that we do it here because speeds are so much faster, so much greater. Whether it was happening today, whether it’s going to happen tomorrow or down the line this month or next month, it doesn’t really change anything.
“It’s always important to have these feelings and listen to them whenever they do end up coming towards you.”
According to the limited formbook, one could assume Schumacher may be suited to the skillset required at IMS, given his standout IndyCar weekend so far has come at Phoenix. He qualified fourth on his oval debut that weekend, admittedly falling through the field in the race, though still learning valuable lessons about running in traffic.
After five rounds, he sits 24th in the standings, arguably making less of an impression across the four theoretically more familiar road-and-street rounds. His teammate Graham Rahal theorises that his smooth style is well-suited to ovals.
“Learning how to drive in Europe is a lot about how to drive a tyre that will dissolve pretty much instantly if you try and move it,” Schumacher explained. “If you drove Pirelli rubber, you drive very smooth, you drive very much under the limit.
“I just brought that over here, right? For street and road courses, this car has to be driven very hard, rough, manually, basically, because the tyres can take it, whereas on an oval you don’t really want that. That’s probably why ovals come easier towards me.
“Because the speed is not that much of a concern to me because I’m used to the speed from F1. It’s about being smooth and making sure that the rear never steps out.”
