– Mick Schumacher experiences ups and downs in his first IndyCar season. On ovals, the rookie from Germany shows strong performance and especially exceeded expectations in Nashville. With P8, he achieved by far the best result of his still young IndyCar career there in mid-July. After 14 races so far in the North American top formula series, P8 from Nashville is Schumacher’s only top-10 result.
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On the numerous road courses in the calendar, Schumacher struggles despite his immense road racing experience. His best result so far on a permanent road course is P16 from early August in Portland. His best result so far on a street circuit dates back to P17 from mid-April in Long Beach.
Better results were certainly within reach for Schumacher during his first IndyCar season, but for various reasons he did not achieve them. Sometimes it was the team, sometimes himself. Last weekend on the street circuit in Markham, where he showed his strongest performance off an oval all weekend, he retired from the race while running in eighth place due to an accident.
Schumacher’s continuation in the IndyCar series beyond 2026 is not yet confirmed. On paper, he has options with several teams for 2027. However, the most promising of these options for him – the cockpit at Meyer Shank Racing as teammate to his former Formula 3 teammate Marcus Armstrong – has not become more secure due to recent developments.
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He is competing in his rookie IndyCar season for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, the team of Bobby Rahal, David Letterman, and Mike Lanigan. That Schumacher struggles especially on street circuits – and particularly on those that have been on the IndyCar calendar for years – is not too surprising for Timo Glock.
From personal experience: Glock can empathize with Schumacher
Glock himself once raced for a year in the USA. In his case, it was the 2005 season in the then ChampCar series, the successor to CART. After the 2007 season, ChampCar went bankrupt as an independent series and merged with the then Indy Racing League (IRL) in 2008 to form today’s IndyCar series. The 2005 ChampCar calendar included 13 races: six on street circuits, three on natural road courses, two on airport circuits, and two on ovals.
Glock, who nowadays races in the DTM, can well empathize with Mick Schumacher’s situation in the 2026 IndyCar season. “There hasn’t been anyone who came over in recent years and was immediately at the front. You simply need your year to get in, to understand it, to understand this street circuit issue,” Glock says in the current podcast episode of Starting Grid.
Recalling his 2005 ChampCar season, Glock says: “I was also in a team, Rocketsports it was called back then, that didn’t have the financial resources like Newman/Haas or Forsythe had. They could invest so much money in damper programs.”
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“Regarding the damper, that was a big issue, which is of course essential on street circuits. And I think the Rahal team around Mick is not yet at the level of the top teams. And then you can go in circles. You won’t get close to those times,” Glock says.
At the same time, the 44-year-old German notes: “Apparently Rahal as a team is well positioned on ovals regarding the basic setup. I know, I only drove two oval races (Milwaukee and Las Vegas; editor’s note). But that’s a completely different kind of driving. You need a very, very special feeling. You have to exactly know what you can demand from the car and what not.”
“And every little mistake, if you go two km/h too fast into the corner, you end up in the wall. So these are topics where it really depends a lot on the feeling. And there he really shows very, very good performances,” Glock says about Schumacher.
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What Glock has also noticed in the course of Schumacher’s rookie season: “He has also been unlucky once or several times, whether it was strategy or something went wrong during a pit stop. There were definitely better results in the air that were simply prevented by technical problems.”
“Therefore,” Glock’s interim conclusion about Schumacher as an IndyCar driver, “I see him completely on target. He is doing a very good job. And the mood over there, no matter who you talked to, was very, very positive regarding his manner, his work ethic, his racing. So that was very positive.”
On the occasion of the two-day pre-test for the Indy 500, which took place at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the end of April this year, Glock was on site as an interested observer of the Rahal team around Mick Schumacher, Graham Rahal, Louis Foster, and Schumacher’s driver coach Ryan Briscoe.
In the 2026 IndyCar overall standings, Mick Schumacher is in 24th place after 14 of 18 races in his rookie season. This makes him currently second to last among the 25 regular drivers. Only Sting Ray Robb, who drives for Juncos Hollinger Racing, has collected one point less than Schumacher so far this season.
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Does Glock believe that Schumacher has a future in the IndyCar series? “Basically, this is currently a very good place for him to develop,” Glock says. What struck him during his on-site visit in Indianapolis: “Physically, he has made a huge leap. You need that over there too, because street circuits really hurt. Physically, he has put on a lot of muscle.”
The current DTM driver and former Formula 1 and ChampCar driver attests to Schumacher in his first season in the USA a “very clear gait, very relaxed, very open.” Quite different from how he perceived him in his two Formula 1 years at Haas (2021 and 2022): “During his Formula 1 time, he was thrown in at the deep end a bit. As soon as he made a mistake, he was immediately hit.”
In this context, Glock names both the then Haas team principal Günther Steiner and the media, “who then immediately hit him” and created the feeling that “he was not allowed to make mistakes, because as soon as he made one or two mistakes, he was hit. So he naturally became a bit smaller and a bit more insecure.”
Glock ventures a tendency about Schumacher’s future
Glock’s advice for Schumacher in his current phase of his racing career is therefore: “Look ahead, make the best of it, and have fun racing. That’s the important thing. That’s what I said.”
For Glock himself, the fun of racing that he had in his 2005 ChampCar season was “simply gigantic,” as he says. “It was just amazing. It was pure driving and a lot of fun.” About Schumacher, Glock adds in this context: “I wish him that he has the fun. And that’s how it looks at the moment.”
Glock does not want to judge whether Mick Schumacher will still be racing IndyCar in 2027. However, he does express a tendency in this regard: “Yes, I think that was already the general tenor, that he is very happy with it. And you notice that he kind of enjoys being a bit secluded. I can very, very well imagine that he establishes himself there in the next one, two, three years.”
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