Mick Schumacher makes revelation about 2026 F1 seat

Mick Schumacher has claimed he was “in contention” for a seat with the new Cadillac F1 team “pretty much until the end”.

Cadillac ultimately opted to sign Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez for their debut F1 season in 2026, though team principal Graeme Lowdon did confirm in July that the American outfit held talks with Schumacher.

The 26-year-old German had a largely underwhelming and short-lived two-year F1 stint with Haas before losing his seat at the end of 2022. 

Schumacher then joined Mercedes as a reserve driver, before going on to race in the World Endurance Championship with Alpine.

After missing out on a Cadillac drive, the son of F1 legend Michael Schumacher has now made the full-time switch to IndyCar for the 2026 season.

“I think that the whole situation has been a tough one in some ways, but also I think understandably they went in a different direction,” Schumacher said.

“The information that I had pretty much until the end was that 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, okay, what do I want? Do I want to try and keep getting back onto the F1 grid or do I want to do racing that I enjoy?

“That’s obviously single-seaters, and yeah, thankfully the opportunity came up with a team, and I’m super glad and super happy to be here where I am now.

“I think that in any case, obviously the world of F1 is a very specific one and a special one, but obviously it’s still a single-seater [in IndyCar].

“I think there have been plenty of great drivers, and numerous ones have also settled into affiliations with other F1 teams for good reason, so I don’t see why the move to IndyCar would close that door, no.”

Schumacher “100% committed” to IndyCar

Despite the talk of a potential F1 return, Schumacher stressed he is fully committed to his new motorsport venture.

“I think that obviously everything will be pretty much new to me,” he added. “A lot of the race tracks are new, oval racing will be new, so there are a lot of things that I still have to understand, to learn.

“Obviously, I have great team-mates alongside me - one with a lot of experience and one who has just had fresh experience. I think I have a good combination there of pointers to go off.

“What would be a success? I think ultimately just the feeling that we’ve been able to put everything in place and that we set ourselves, let’s say, a target. What that target exactly will be, I think that’s something we’ll have to figure out as we go and match our expectations to what we can achieve.

“But I am very positive. I think there are lots of good things out there and lots of good things happening at the moment, so I don’t want to say, ‘okay, this is the target right now’, but definitely our aim is to do our best, and that will be figured out along the way.”