– Actually, everything seemed set for a small fairy tale at the Laguna Seca Raceway: After a collision in the first lap, Dennis Hauger was out early and Mick Schumacher was already in tenth place. The tide in the battle for the “Rookie of the Year” title could still have turned at the last second. But then the RLL driver had to end his stint prematurely, which sent him straight to ruin – Schumacher was caught out by extreme tire wear.
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“Of course, we would have liked to end the season on a high, which we did not manage. It seems that something was not quite right with the car. In any case, we wore out the tires extremely quickly – much faster than the competition,” the German explained after the race.
“The first laps were really strong and we were able to pass Will [Power], Marcus [Ericsson], and Pato [O’Ward]. But exactly at the moment I passed Pato, my tires completely collapsed,” the 27-year-old continued.
He had fallen into a typical trap of the soft “Alternate” tires, which in the IndyCar series lose grip abruptly under certain conditions. In technical jargon, this phenomenon is called “falling off a cliff” – free falling off the cliff.
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Unlike the Pirelli tires in Formula 1 and the European junior categories, which Schumacher is used to from his career in Europe, the IndyCar tires are not deliberately designed for such degradation. Once they suddenly fall out of their optimal operating window, they are usually irretrievably ruined.
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A conclusion of the 2026 IndyCar season is anyway: The soft tires (“Reds”) were extremely tricky to manage on most tracks. The hard tires (“Blacks”) were generally the better choice. The reason was a new generation of Firestone tires, whose development focused more on sustainability.
“From this perspective, today was certainly not optimal. But overall, this year was mainly about learning – and that is exactly what we did,” Schumacher summarizes. “I am very grateful to RLL and everyone involved like Graham [Rahal] and Louis [Foster], who helped me grow throughout the year. Now I look forward to 2027 with great anticipation.”
A coup in the rookie standings thus did not materialize at the season finale, but Mick Schumacher’s future in the USA is already secured. In 2027, he will race for Meyer Shank Racing and also benefit from the technical alliance with the top team Chip Ganassi Racing.
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And historically, the German has traditionally shown significantly stronger performance in his second season in a category than in the first year.
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