– The third street circuit weekend and the fifth race weekend overall in the 2026 IndyCar calendar is underway. On the traditional Long Beach Street Circuit in the Greater Los Angeles area in the US state of California, the first Free Practice for the 51st edition of the Long Beach Grand Prix took place on Friday. Mick Schumacher finished last (P25) in this opening session due to a technical defect. (IndyCar Long Beach 2026: Schedule, TV, all info)
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Right at the start of the session, it was Schumacher who caused the first red phase. The reason was that his Honda-powered Dallara from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) rolled out in the track section at the fountain (turns 2/3).
Schumacher asked the team over the radio whether he should restart the engine using the hybrid system. This was denied by the RLL team. Due to lack of propulsion, the car was then towed by track personnel into the pit lane, but not to Schumacher’s pit box, rather against the direction of travel only to the exit of the pit lane.
At the exit of the pit lane, the car with Schumacher sitting in the cockpit stood still for several minutes. Only when the competitors’ pit lane activity had somewhat subsided was Schumacher’s car pushed by the RLL crew to the team tent to diagnose the defect in the drivetrain area. This was not a matter of a few minutes.
Schumacher did not return to the track until the end of the 40-minute part of the session. And even in the two-part group phase, he was unable to set a flying lap.
In the end, Schumacher’s only lap time recorded was his non-representative warm-up lap just before the defect: 1:23.324 minutes. For Saturday, the decision was made to change the engine. The fastest time of the day on Friday was set by Will Power (Andretti-Honda) in 1:07.605 minutes. (Result: FP1 in Long Beach)
Long Beach ahead, Indy 500 on the horizon: Exciting weeks for Mick Schumacher
While the street circuit in Long Beach is still largely unfamiliar to Mick Schumacher, as he was unable to complete a single flying lap on Friday, the new design of his Rahal-Honda was unusual for spectators. The beverage manufacturer Liquid Death has come on board as a new main sponsor for this weekend and has given Schumacher’s car a black-white-gold appearance. The new design did not bring luck.
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For comparison: Dennis Hauger (Coyne-Honda) and Caio Collet (Foyt-Chevrolet) – like Mick Schumacher rookies in the 2026 IndyCar season and, like him, had not yet raced in Long Beach before this weekend – completed 33 laps and P17 (Hauger) and 28 laps and P21 (Collet) in FP1 on Friday. Rookies in the IndyCar field are allowed to go on track in both Group 1 and Group 2 during free practice.
For Hauger’s teammate Romain Grosjean, Friday was the day of his 40th birthday. The Swiss-born Frenchman finished the free practice on his “round” after 21 laps in P19. Grosjean has good memories of Long Beach. In 2022 and also 2023, when he drove for the Andretti team, he finished second in the race. After a year off from IndyCar (2025), Grosjean returned to Dale Coyne Racing for the 2026 season, where he had his rookie season back in 2021.
The second and final red phase of the day was caused by Scott McLaughlin (Penske-Chevrolet; 2nd) in Group 1 of the split training session, with a crash into the tire barriers at the end of the back straight. The cause of the accident – McLaughlin’s third in three consecutive race weekends – was initially not a driving error.
According to McLaughlin, the gearbox refused to downshift during the braking phase. In a TV interview, the Penske driver admitted that he should have taken the escape route instead of trying to force the car into the corner in too high a gear.
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On Saturday in Long Beach, the 25 IndyCar drivers will have the second Free Practice (FP2) and qualifying on the program, with the six-driver Q3 segment of qualifying once again experiencing a format adjustment.
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