It was continued progress for Mick Schumacher at the Unser IndyCar Open Test at Phoenix Raceway.
The 26-year-old German had a busy two days, logging 222 laps (fifth most) over the three sessions on the 1-mile tri-oval. He ended up 18th overall on the combined speedchart with a flying lap of 171.076 mph (21.0408 seconds).
“It was good,” Schumacher said. “We got not as much running (on Wednesday) simply due to the weather conditions, but what we did was very effective and the changes were very interesting. Overall, I think we’re confident we know how we want to start our race weekend here, and take it from there.”
For Schumacher, who is embarking on his maiden campaign in the IndyCar Series behind the wheel of Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s No. 47 Honda, it was another step in his oval maturation.
Earlier this month, he received his oval initiation in a solo test day at Homestead-Miami Speedway, a 1.5-mile circuit with variable high banking. This time, in the Valley of the Sun, where he shared the track with his competitors for the first time, he noticed a considerable difference in navigating a proper line around the track.
Here, it’s just very short,” Schumacher said. “The lap comes quick. They’re high-g (g-force) corners, which are very interesting to drive.
“I feel like what I’m most interested in is to see how the other guys do it. Looking at them actually drive on track and see how they approach some of those corners is impressive to see and hopefully, we’ll be able to get there by the race weekend.”
While there was limited side-by-side running during the test, the outing was still beneficial for Schumacher to learn the cadence of having a spotter provide feedback of on-track happenings.
In one instance, Troyer mentioned a close call for his rookie driver on Tuesday when he came up on a car quickly and tried to utilize the turn’s banking to brush off speed but quickly went off the racing line and skated up the track. Fortunately, Schumacher was able to keep it off the wall and continue on.
And when he did that, he got offline and he got pickup (tire marbles) on his tires. The car took off. He did keep it off the fence, but he got offline, he picked up some clag on the tires and he found out what it’s like to get offline.”
All in all, though, Schumacher is appreciating the “new challenge.”
“It’s fun,” Schumacher said. “A new challenge is always good. As a team, we’re working really hard to get everything done and sorted for our first oval race that we’re going to have here in a couple weeks. Yeah, I think we’re in a good place to learn and get everything done for the first oval race.