RLL Says Schumacher Won’t Need 17 Races to Catch On Icon Sportswire - Getty ImagesSusan WadeWed, November 26, 2025 at 12:18 AM UTC·7 min readCadillac F1 team’s decision to pass on him was a catalyst to Schumacher’s decision to focus on IndyCar.
Schumacher indicates he’s eager to experience more side-by-side action, but he’s not closing the door on Formula 1 interest down the road.
NTT IndyCar Series team co-owner Bobby Rahal has seen the parade of Formula 1 drivers come to the United States with a mixed bag of performance results.
But the low-key boss at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing said Tuesday he has high hopes that Mick Schumacher’s move from European racing to the Zionsville, Indiana-based organization will be seamless as the 26-year-old son of seven-time World Driving Champion Michael Schumacher competes in the No. 47 Honda in 2026.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd Schumacher, who hasn’t slammed the door on future interest in Formula 1, said he’s fully committed to the 17-race IndyCar season, thankful the opportunity arose at RLL to become a teammate to Graham Rahal and 2025 series rookie of the year Louis Foster, and “super-glad and super-happy to be here where I am now.”
“We’ve seen drivers come from Europe, and some have been successful over here, some haven’t. And some were very, very good drivers in Europe at the time,” Rahal said. “It’s really about the approach. He’s approaching it the way it should be. He knows it’s going to take hard work. He knows he’s going to have to work with his teammates. He knows he’s going to have to be committed to it, which is so critical.
RLL team owner Bobby Rahal and driver Louis Foster. Michael L. Levitt - Getty Images“This team is here to help Mick. We’ve always worked to create environments over the years that are beneficial to the guys driving the cars, in good days and bad days. I think we’re in a pretty good spot there as we start this. I’m quite sure it’s not going to take Mick very long to figure it out.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAlthough Schumacher said he has “plenty of work still to be done to get me up to speed” and “a lot of things that I still have to understand, to learn” before the March 1 season-opener on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, he said, “I’m just purely excited for the great racing that there will be and the fun that will bring up and create.”
After his 43 starts in Formula 1 and three podium finishes in the World Endurance Challenge, Schumacher said he’s curiously eager to experience the side-by-side aspect of IndyCar “and maybe a little touch here and there” and to confront the quasi-myths of oval racing that has spooked so many European standouts.
“From what I understand, the cars are pretty robust, as well, when it comes to side-by-side action, and I've talked to a couple other drivers, and they really enjoy the racing side of things. For me, it was really just about getting into my own car and doing and feeling that and kind of being able to take the opportunities that are given to me,” he said.
He said he counts his October driving test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway a success and said, “I just wanted to see the car, wanted to know how it feels to drive. But I think ultimately it was also just the passion that people had, to see that and to see how excited they were about racing. They showed me this is something I could see myself in and working in as an environment. Definitely I think as a whole, it has been a very good experience, and I guess therefore I just wanted to seal it and make sure that I can get more of that in the next year.”
Mick Schumacher driving in the WEC. James Moy Photography - Getty ImagesOf his initial test, Schumacher said, “Learning more about the car, how it behaves, the little things that we can change here and there are very interesting. It's a different driving style. It's a different car, so I can't say if it's more fun or less fun than F1, but it's racing a car, and I think there's nothing more fun than racing a car around a racetrack.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs for ovals, RLL Team President Jay Frye said Tuesday that Schumacher will have four tests on ovals. And while Schumacher was candid about his concern—which comes at least partially from all the fearmongering from the F1 community—he said, “On the other hand, I think motorsports on the whole is dangerous. So I don’t really see why particularly that one thing should be more dangerous than anything else.
“Obviously, there’s been multiple things, and Jay has been a big part of that, in making oval racing or just racing in IndyCar safer, and therefore we’ve had multiple conversations about that, and they’ve all been positive to my ears. I don’t take it on the easy shoulder. I think that it is crazy speeds. It is super-quick. We’re obviously racing hard side by side. But I accept the risk for the enjoyment of the racing's sake.
“It’s a great championship,” Schumacher said. “It was important not to do like a half thing but actually go in and do it 100%, and definitely ovals are a part of that. I’ve had good conversations with people around who had good and bad views on it, and I just had to make an average out of that and decide it for myself.”
He said IndyCar racing “reminds me a little bit of good old karting days. I think pretty similar to how WEC racing was.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWhat triggered his serious interest in IndyCar ultimately was the realization that the new Cadillac F1 team took a pass on him. “The information that I had up to pretty much the end [of negotiations], we’d been in contention for that seat. And then they went a different direction, which is fair enough, and it just led to me having to understand, ‘OK. What do I want? Do I want to try and keep getting back on to the F1 grid or do I want to do racing that I enjoy?’ That’s obviously single seaters.
Mick Schumacher. Kym Illman - Getty Images“Ultimately for me, it was just interesting to exploit that single-seater route again and kind of be more settled in it. Then INDYCAR was the best option,” he said. “I just had to kind of confirm it to me and to everybody around me that this is something that I could see myself doing for the long-term, and therefore, the decision-making process was pretty simple. It was just trying to figure out how committed would I be. I wouldn't be here if I wouldn't be 100-percent committed.”
He ruled out racing in IMSA during idle IndyCar weekends: “Really, this year is about being 100- percent focused on what I'm doing. It's already enough for me to kind of learn all the new things that I have to get after. So the focus really lies on that. So I don't really see myself doing IMSA on the side.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHe did leave some wiggle room when it comes to a return to F1.
“In any case, obviously the world of F1 is a very specific one and a special one, but it's still a single-seater. I don't see why the move to IndyCar would close that door.”
Rahal credited Frye’s energy and effort for “making this all happen” but said, Dirk Müller who drove for us as part of our BMW team for a number of years, was instrumental in RLL meeting with Schumacher initially.
AdvertisementAdvertisement
