Mick Schumacher was the first car out in qualifying at Phoenix Raceway on Friday, with zero oval reference points and a 1-mile track he’d never raced on. His two-lap average: 173.667 mph. Then he sat and waited while 23 other drivers tried to beat him.
Only three could.
The 26-year-old son of Michael Schumacher, making his first-ever oval qualifying attempt in the NTT IndyCar Series, planted his No. 47 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda on the second row of Saturday’s Good Ranchers 250. Fourth place. Ahead of Scott McLaughlin, ahead of Alexander Rossi, ahead of four-time champion Alex Palou, and miles ahead of where anyone — possibly including Schumacher himself — expected him to be.
“Hopefully we won’t be starting too far in the back,” Schumacher had said before his run. The understatement of the young season.
Josef Newgarden, the last driver to win at Phoenix back in 2018 and one of IndyCar’s elite oval racers, didn’t mince words. “I thought he was shockingly good,” Newgarden said. “The guy is — literally — a stranger to oval racing. He did a great job.”
Newgarden qualified second behind teammate David Malukas, who earned his first career NTT P1 Award with a 175.383 mph average in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet. That front-row Penske lockout surprised nobody. What turned heads was the row directly behind them.
Graham Rahal qualified third at 173.993, his best oval starting position since Texas in 2012. With Schumacher right beside him, RLL had both its cars in the top four on a short oval for the first time in two decades. That’s not a typo.
To be hanging with the Penske cars is not something we can say we’ve done on a short oval in a really long time — maybe ever,” Rahal said. He credited the team’s offseason grind, but he saved special praise for his rookie teammate. “He’s silky smooth with his feet, way smoother than me or Louis. That’s a big advantage.”
Newgarden, ever the analyst, did note that going out first may have given Schumacher slightly better track conditions, as the surface degraded under the midday Arizona sun. Drivers who qualified later showed bigger drop-offs on their second laps. Schumacher was remarkably consistent across both of his. Fair point — but plenty of veterans have gone out early in qualifying and not put it fourth on the grid at a track they’ve never seen.
The session had its casualties. Two-time series champion Will Power crashed his No. 26 Andretti Global Honda and will start dead last in 25th. His rough transition from Team Penske continues — 22nd at St. Petersburg, now a qualifying wreck at Phoenix. Felix Rosenqvist didn’t even make it to qualifying after destroying his Meyer Shank Racing Honda in practice. Neither driver was hurt.
Palou, fresh off winning the season opener at St. Pete, managed only 10th. Short ovals are a different animal, and even the reigning four-time champion looked mortal on the desert mile.
Saturday’s 250-lap race will be the real reckoning for Schumacher. Qualifying on an oval is about raw speed and nerve. Racing on one, in traffic, with 24 cars banging wheels through a single groove, is an entirely different education. Newgarden said as much: “The race is another story.”
But he also left the door open. “You have to be open-minded in this series. He could just come in as a natural talent. That’s not unheard of. He passed his first test with flying colors.”
The last name on Schumacher’s fire suit has carried enormous weight everywhere he’s gone — through Formula 2, through two difficult F1 seasons at Haas, through every paddock conversation about whether the talent matches the bloodline. On Friday in the Arizona desert, on a surface he’d barely touched, Mick Schumacher let the stopwatch do the talking. The race will tell us far more. But the stopwatch already said plenty.
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