Mick Schumacher says he’s found it straightforward to adapt to IndyCar given how close its chassis is to what he remembers from Formula 2.
The former Haas Formula 1 driver is making his IndyCar debut in this weekend’s season-opening round.
“It’s an F2 car, just with better tyres,” said Schumacher, who won the Formula 2 championship in 2020. Both series use single-specification chassis supplied by Dallara, but IndyCar uses Firestone tyres while F2 cars run on Pirellis.
IndyCar has used a version of its current DW12 chassis since 2012 and is due to introduce a new model in 2028.
“I feel like if we bumped it up with like maybe 100 or 200 horsepower more and kept the weight down a little bit, I think that’d be pretty good,” Schumacher told Off Track with Hinch and Rossi. “And I guess that’s kind of the transition that the future car is going into. So that would be pretty fun to see.”
Schumacher lapped just one second off the fastest pace set by Scott McLaughlin in the opening practice session at St Petersburg, though that left him 23rd in the 25-car field.
His move into IndyCar marks a return to single-seater racing for the former Ferrari Driver Academy member. After losing his F1 race seat with Haas at the end of 2022, Schumacher raced for Alpine in the World Endurance Championship until last year.
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He said he began to take an active interest in the series 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 move to the series with RLL last November. He says the championship feels more “raw” compared to the series he raced in previously.
“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.”
Mick Schumacher, RLL, IndyCar, St Petersburg, 2026
Mick Schumacher, RLL, IndyCar, St Petersburg, 2026
Mick Schumacher, RLL, IndyCar, St Petersburg, 2026
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