– For Mick Schumacher (RLL-Honda; 22nd) and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team, the second free practice at the IndyCar race in Portland saw a drop in the standings. Schumacher could only leave three other drivers behind on Saturday morning local time. (Result 2nd Free Practice)
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From the start, things did not really go smoothly for the German. In the 40-minute collective phase of the session, he did not get beyond last place. In the subsequent group phase, in which Schumacher this time competed in the second group, he improved to a time of 59.173 seconds.
This made him 22nd with a gap of 0.875 seconds to the best time set by Marcus Armstrong (MSR-Honda; 1st). However, Armstrong set the best time of 58.298 seconds on soft tires, which no other driver chose. Considering the fastest time on hard tires by Alex Palou (Ganassi-Honda; 2nd), Mick Schumacher was only 0.562 seconds behind.
Photo gallery: The car designs of Mick Schumacher in the 2026 IndyCar season
After the first practice, Schumacher had complained about a poor setup. “We had quite a bit of instability, which is of course not ideal on a track like this that requires a lot of confidence,” he said after the first practice.
His hope to “put something together” in the setup thanks to Foster’s strong performance in the first practice does not seem to have been confirmed, as Graham Rahal (RLL-Honda; 21st) also struggled. He was 0.041 seconds faster than Schumacher but still did not make it into the top 20.
Louis Foster (RLL-Honda; 12th) initially seemed to confirm his strong form from Friday’s practice. He even led the field for a long time during the collective phase. Later, however, he could not improve further and dropped back to P12, after having been fifth on Friday.
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RLL’s setback was mainly due to an improvement by the McLaren team, which is still not where it wants to be but at least climbed out of the cellar of the standings. Christian Lundgaard (McLaren-Chevrolet; 10th) showed a significant improvement compared to his 22nd place on Friday.
The only two notable incidents of the practice occurred almost simultaneously after about twelve minutes: Rinus “VeeKay” van Kalmthout (Juncos-Chevrolet; 14th) copied the wall kiss in turn 1 from Armstrong and O’Ward from the previous day. Again, the suspension remained intact, only the right front tire was damaged.
Almost simultaneously, Marcus Ericsson (Andretti-Honda; 6th) went off into the dirt exiting turn 6 and knocked over an advertising board, without anything else happening. In the group phase, Romain Grosjean (Coyne-Honda; 24th) copied this mistake, but the advertising board was already removed by then.
Overall, as expected, the field is very close together on the short track in Oregon. Mistakes in qualifying will be immediately punished with the loss of entire starting rows.
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Qualifying starts at 1 AM CEST. (All info about the IndyCar race in Portland)
