Brown to lead Schumacher through month of May

Few active race engineers have more experience at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway than Andy Brown, and that’s precisely why Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing recruited the Englishman to lead Mick Schumacher during his first month of May.

From being part of the technical leadership behind the 1992 Galmer G92 Al Unser Jr drove to victory at the Indy 500, to his years with Panther Racing during its peak seasons with Sam Hornish Jr, to his ensuing years at Chip Ganassi Racing, to the one-offs he’s done at Indy during the Dallara DW12 era, Brown has a mountain of knowledge to impart with Schumacher and the No. 47 RLL Honda program.

“Obviously, Andy’s reputation preceded him in a really strong and positive way,” RLL president Jay Frye told RACER. “Our VP of Engineering, John Hennek, worked with Andy and so did Grant Weaver, who’s our team manager, so it was a group that worked together before and is very comfortable together.”

Schumacher is becoming well-versed in change during the first few months of his switch to IndyCar.

After starting with Mike Pawlowski as his race engineer during the three opening races, the team brought back the esteemed Eddie Jones at Barber Motorsports Park who continued in the role at Long Beach. But with Jones committed to engineering RLL’s Takuma Sato at the Indy 500—they won the race together in 2020—Frye needed to find another supreme veteran to steer Schumacher’s program for most of May.

Jones stepped in to engineer the No. 47 car for last weekend’s Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis road course, and now it’s time for Brown to take the controls once Speedway practice starts on Tuesday.

“So we’ve had Mick with Eddie Jones the last few weeks, and that's been going really well,” Frye added. “Eddie and Takuma have some unfinished business at the Speedway, so Eddie's coming back to work with Takuma, so that left a gap for the 500. Andy’s name was brought up and it was funny, because light bulbs went off around everybody, like, holy cow, that'd be phenomenal if we can get him. So he was reached out to, and we were able to put something together. And we're really, really glad he's here.”

Surrounding Schumacher with engineers who’ve won IndyCar championships and Indy 500s has brought renewed optimism for all the rookie can achieve this season. Leaving the Indy Open Test where he got his first laps on the IMS oval, Schumacher posted the second-best lap among the RLL foursome and was ranked 20th overall at 222.802mph.

“Having a veteran presence is important,” Frye said. “We've even seen it with Eddie and him already and how they work together. Eddie's obviously legendary too, and so we're just really glad to have him and Andy there to guide Mick. And obviously we've only had a couple days with Andy so far, and it's only going get better going forward. So excited to see how it all plays out.”