One of the "prerequisites", per se, aside from the standard on-track Rookie Orientation Program, for a rookie to take the starting grid for the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway is to milk a dairy cow.
The American Dairy Association, which supplies the inconic bottle of milk to the race winner, brings a cow to be milked by all rookies in the starting lineup as a part of annual rookie luncheon.
Mick Schumacher came prepared, but he was happy to check that box off the list.
"I think I was happier once the cow got to leave and go back to its home," Schumacher told FanSided's Beyond the Flag. "It was pretty warm that day and I was standing under that tent without real air circulation. So yeah, happy once it got to go back."
With the cow "back home again", Schumacher is now in line to get his first true taste of being "Back Home Again" in Speedway, Indiana.
The cow-milking tradition is one of just a number of events during a busy week between Indy 500 qualifying and race day itself, but the 27-year-old German driver of the No. 47 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda has still found time to decompress ahead of his first ever start in the "Greatest Spectacle in Racing" this week.
"We had a couple days off here, which was good," he said. "I like to be able to kind of regroup a little bit and go into race day."
Mick, the son of legendary seven-time Formula 1 world champion Michael Schumacher, spent two seasons competing in F1 in 2021 and 2022 before spending the 2024 and 2025 seasons in the World Endurance Championship.
Six races into his NTT IndyCar Series career, he has enjoyed the sport's overall environment, and he spoke at length about what makes it so different to the environment in Formula 1.
"There are significant differences, one of them being that here we're able to park with the RVs inside, and back in F1, you’re not," he explained. "You had to always find your spot, and that meant what you would do with your colleagues would be very minimal, and the interactions would be pretty minimal because everybody had different schedules.
"I feel like here that’s something that is very different. You have very similar schedules throughout the time, which means that you have a lot more time to spend with them outside of racing, and I feel like overall there’s a lot of respect out here and a lot of great people who you can have a good chat with, even outside of racing to talk about private stuff."
Michael Schumacher won the United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course five times in eight years. But he remains considered one of the greatest drivers to have never competed in the Indy 500.
Yet Mick ironically feels that it's his own experience in Europe which has actually allowed him to settle in on ovals quite nicely thus far, highlighted by a fourth place qualifying effort at Phoenix Raceway in March.
"I think Phoenix went well, super well on the qualifying side," he said. "Obviously, not so much in the race. Nonetheless, some of the racing traits that I learned throughout my career in Europe really help me in oval racing, just by being smooth, looking out for the tires. That’s kind of what you have to do here, you just have to nurture your car a little bit and make sure that all the movements and stuff don’t upset it too much. That’s something that is very important out here.
"Unfortunately, [Indy 500] qualifying day didn’t go quite as well as we were hoping it would. I think in the morning we felt very confident and comfortable in many regards, and I think we were expecting to go a lot faster than what we did.
"We’re still analyzing that, obviously with the thought of the race; our focus shifted over to the race quite quickly after qualifying, but nonetheless, there’s an ongoing investigation on our side to see what happened and what [changes] we could make, what could have been better, and what we need to do for the future to be better."
Still, we've seen Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing historically be stronger in the race than they are in qualifying, and given how much focus the team had devoted to race trim even before Monday's rain-shortened practice session and Friday's Carb Day session, Schumacher remains genuinely confident in where things stand heading into race day.
"We’ve done the open test, we’ve been doing the previous week’s testing, where a lot of that has been race running and race trim," he said. "I think we have a lot of info on what we need to do, and obviously now it’s just adjusting and adapting to the conditions that we’ll maybe find on Sunday."
From a weather standpoint, we're all certainly hoping it's Sunday.
"I don’t know the weather – in German I would say wetterfrosch [weather frogs] – but people who know what the weather is, it’s just an estimate, but hopefully we’ll have a decent car on Sunday, and even if it’s not, we’ll just have to adjust to it and adapt to it," he continued. "So hopefully we’ll be in the ballpark and be able to move forward.
"I’m in more of a mindset right now that if I’m not in it, I can't win it. I need to make sure that we’re driving smart and making our way up forward, stint by stint, making places and making up ground. I think that’s the most important part of that race. There’s so much stuff happening there that you just need to be in the right place at the right time to make a big jump forward. Hopefully we’ll be able to do that."
Schumacher has been able to lean on his more experienced teammates as he prepares for a race unlike any other that he's ever run.
"Graham’s been great all year," he said. "Louis as well, and obviously Takuma now this week has been a huge help."
Graham Rahal is set to make his 19th Indy 500 start. Takuma Sato, a two-time winner, is set to make his 17th. And Louis Foster just went through the process of being a rookie at the Speedway a year ago, en route to a solid 12th place finish after starting 20th.
"Having four cars, you just feel right away that everybody can develop in different directions, and then we can all regroup and put it all together and hopefully have a good car for all four of us," Schumacher continued. "And Graham’s got so much experience here, but he’s just a great human being. I really enjoy working with him. He’s super fun and just an all-around great person."
Schumacher admits that he was initially hesitant to make the switch to IndyCar, simply because of the fear of ovals that many drivers who compete in Formula 1 seem to have. But having familiarized himself with some of the many safety advancements that have been made by the sport and its partners in recent years, he decided to go for it.
He also gave us his theory as to why so many F1 drivers are so openly opposed to running the Indy 500, or even on ovals in general.
"I think it’s probably just by what they’ve been told from the past," he noted. "IndyCar has, in my opinion, improved a lot in safety, and I did the step to come over here and actually listen in and hear what they’ve done for safety to decide whether or not I feel comfortable racing over here.
"I listened in and I heard how much has been invested and how much time has been spent on making sure these cars are safe, and you definitely see it. I think that’s just something that probably doesn’t really arrive over in Europe – it definitely didn’t arrive to me. It took initiative from myself to come over here to understand that."
His first Indy 500 is also set to mark his first time at the race, period.
"I’ve only ever been here last year for Carb Day, actually," he recalled. "But it was surrounding other topics, not specifically IndyCar, so we were kind of in and out pretty quickly. Nonetheless, now that I’m here, I’m very excited to go and experience the race itself, having everybody out here and just enjoying the feeling of being a part of the Indy 500."
Having not yet gotten the opportunity to partake in driver introductions, in front of a crowd of 350,000-plus fans, he did his best to draw a comparison to this event.
"The thing is, in an F1 race, you really don't really notice the people too much," he began. "I think the way that I've experienced big crowds, whenever I race, I never really notice them that much because I’m so focused on making sure what I do is the right thing. And I don’t really have much time to look around, let’s say. So I'm curious to see how it’s going to be here.
"In an oval, it’s obviously like a bowl. You have all the people sitting around you, which is obviously going to be very different. I guess the best way I could compare it to in terms of how I imagine it’s going to be is like a charity football match, soccer match, where you’re very exposed and you have a lot of people being able to look at you, and you see them very clearly.
"I think it’s obviously a bit more difficult to do that at 220 [miles per hour], going around the track and not being able to see the faces. I’m sure it’s just going to be the emotions, the passion that you’ll feel from the people, but less so the screaming and the noise."
He is also particularly looking forward to the chance to meet team co-owner David Letterman, with whom he's not yet gotten the chance to interact.
"I haven't yet," he said "It was actually set up to be during my first test in October and it never really came about. So hopefully I will see him this weekend."
And it's a weekend he feels he's more than ready for, after far more preparation than he has grown accustomed to for a single event.
"I think we’ve done enough driving in circles without it actually counting!" he said. "So we’re ready to go out there and have fun."
Live coverage of the 110th running of the Indy 500 is set to be provided by Fox starting at 10:00 a.m. ET this Sunday, May 24. Start a free trial of FuboTV and catch all of the action from Indianapolis Motor Speedway!
Add us as a preferred source on Google