More than half the IndyCar field rolled into Road America on June 9 for a rare test day, the series' first proper track time after five straight competition weekends and a vital reference point before the XPEL Grand Prix returns to Elkhart Lake on June 19-21.
The four-mile road course is unlike anything else on the calendar, and the new generation of drivers spent the day learning its rhythm. Mick Schumacher, now racing for Rahal Letterman Lanigan, was among those getting to grips with the Wisconsin parkland circuit.
"It's a very unique track. I think it would be unfair to take too much comparison to other tracks," Schumacher said. He kept coming back to the elevation: "I guess the undulation, like, how much goes up and down. It's beautiful driving through."
That undulation was the talking point up and down the paddock. Will Power, who was running with Andretti Global, zeroed in on the same characteristic — and the trap it sets. "It's how much it drops down is the problem, whether you use it or not," Power said of the circuit's plunging sections.
For Christian Rasmussen and Ed Carpenter Racing, the test was a targeted fix rather than a tick-box exercise. "Road America is a place that we really struggled last year, which is like why we chose" to test there, Rasmussen explained, before describing the simple satisfaction of a productive day: "It was good to get back in a race car and feel like you can make it do something."
Nolan Siegel, in the Arrow McLaren entry, underlined how scarce these days are — and what they cost the crews who run them. With the team arriving straight off the short-oval round in St. Louis, Siegel noted the mechanics "got to sleep for two hours, three hours before they left St. Louis to come here." His verdict on the value: "We do not really get to test in IndyCar, so these days are super important."
The St. Louis reference carried an edge. Siegel used the Road America visit to reflect publicly for the first time on his collision with championship leader Alex Palou at Gateway, contact he made clear he still does not understand.
"I'm sure he didn't do anything intentionally. I think it was just unnecessary, to be perfectly honest," Siegel said. He went further on the move itself: "We weren't racing each other. I was going to just fall in behind him. He went straight to, like, lane 2 1/2 when he knows that I can't run higher than him. He kind of put me in a position where I was going to end up in the wall either way for really no gain. Not entirely sure why that decision was made."
Siegel accepted he had options of his own, but argued they all ended badly on a short oval. "On my side, I think I probably could have lifted and then bailed and filed in behind him, but you do that enough times and you just get freight-trained," he said. "You can't be doing that in any car, especially on a short oval. Get on the back foot, you just get destroyed. So frustrating, and yeah, just a little unnecessary. But again, I'm sure it wasn't intentional."
Siegel said he had not yet spoken to Palou about it. The Spaniard, who still leads the standings despite a tighter margin after Gateway, will start a clear title favourite when the series reconvenes at Road America. After a test day spent chasing the circuit's secrets, the racing resumes on June 21.
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