Indycar Dad Podcast - Ep 7 - Indycar News in 5 minutes 2/5/26

Here is the Indycar news for the week of February 5th, 2026. Here is what happened in Indycar this week. Presented in 5 minutes:Mick Shumacher Testing. He had the entire track (homestead) to himself. He didn’t crash. Ryan Briscoe is his driver coach. I think that is a great result for the team. But there is no data to work with here. It will be useful to prep him for the Phoenix oval test. We have some spy shots of outside the PREMA shop and it doesn’t look good. Callum Ilot was interviewed and he also indicated that they don’t seem likely to be at the test days nor at St. Pete. The Freedom 250 was put on the calendar. We haven’t seen much detail, but everyone is promising a race in Washington DC as a celebration of our country’s 250th birthday. McLaren “launched” their 2026 cars. Considering they look pretty much the same and the chassis and engine is the same, the only thing we missed from that event was some free food. Maybe I’ll get an invite next year. It turns out that Romain Grosjean was at media day last week. He wasn’t part of the official images released by Indycar, but pictures of him in an all black firesuit that matched Dennis Hauger’s appeared on Getty Images. We all got to see a letter that Roger Penske wrote to Donald Trump. I always admired Roger Penske. I live near him and he always seemed like a guy who spent his money doing things that I would do if I was a Billionaire. I tell you what, I wouldn’t be writing letters to kiss anyone’s ass if I was Roger Penske. Dario Francitti will be racing at St. Pete this year. Unfortunately, he will be in a Toyota truck, but it will be fun to see him back and racing competitively. Conor Daly said there is a percentage of a chance that he will be at St. Pete in an Indycar.