#marcus armstrong

hi there guys, gals, and pals! i decided to make my very own guide to indycar for everyone who maybe wants to get into it but doesn't know where to begin!

this is just part 1! part 2 will be here!

you may be wondering why I'm starting with the drivers first...but truthfully WHY start watching or following something if you can't find at least one person you want to support

also, i of course can't put everything about everyone on here or it would absolutely be like out of hand long, so i just tried to highlight some fun facts, stats, and their past driving experiences/series prior to indycar!

“apparently I shouldn’t be telling people but I’ve been reading this smut book, so that was awesome”

shirtgate. the greatest controversy to hit the f2 paddock in 2020.

I would love to explain. but please know you're getting not just shirt gate but an entire saga. because you have asked me and I am me.

so. 2020 as we all remember was a very interesting year. despite this, there was still an f2 season. and now im not entirely sure of the specifics of this but I do know that over the course of the season callum ilott and mick schumacher traded the lead of the f2 championship back and forth, but in the end it was ultimately won by mick schumacher.

now you might be asking who these people are.

at the time both callum ilott and mick shumacher were f2 drivers both signed to the Ferrari driver academy (FDA). the way that f2 works is that there's a bunch of different teams (that are distinctly Unrelated to the f1 teams) but usually each f1 team has a driver development program where they sign a bunch of kids across multiple series that they see Promise in that they Hope they can One Day sign to their f1 team. most of the time this doesn't work out. and the Ferrari one is kind of notorious for being, well, ferrari. which is to say, torturing their drivers (unsure if this is still the case tbh but I know it specifically was during this era). none of this is important but it does provide good background.

in any case. the FDA during this specific era had a lot of drivers that are now kinda sorta a big deal. or at least, made it to the professional leagues (at least briefly). among these we have callum ilott (british, occasionally streams on twitch when he remembers his password, absolutely hates working out with a passion), mick schumacher (son of Michael schumacher, really incredibly obsessed with dogs and also Texas Roadhouse), Marcus Armstrong (kiwi, posts far too many photos that include his bare toes on instagram, self proclaimed worlds largest consumer of peanut butter), zhou guanyu (chinese, owns an adorable cat named sweetcorn, has better fashion taste than most), and robert schwartzman (I really don't know anything about him other than the fact that he posts weird music on Soundcloud and I once saw him locked out of his personal car with my own two eyes). callum, mick, marcus and robert all made it to indycar (among other things) and zhou was briefly in f1 and is now a test and reserve driver for cadillac).

now. back to shirtgate.

mick wins the championship. callum comes second.

callum makes a fairly normal instagram post about it, if you overlook the fact that him and mick are staring into each others eyes with love

great. fine. normal.

the following week callum makes Another Post

this sparked immediate confusion as people began to guess. the people in the comments were pretty torn between callum having stolen mick or marcus's clothes.

an important note here: marcus and callum were roommates. they claim it was for one year. by all accounts (callums own twitter) it was no less than three. they were both with the FDA and living in Maranello, Italy. its apparently not uncommon for drivers who are on the younger side to live with one another, however, they were incredibly Not Normal about it. as evidenced by the very real comment that Marcus left on Callum's instagram post:

and Callum's very real reply

the best way I can even begin to describe these two are if max verstappen and Charles Leclerc were Actually together and they wanted you to Know they were actually together but were poorly trying to hide it. you might find that weird of me to say. if you do please dig up any interview with the two of them and then report back to me.

in any case.

callum twitch streamed a few days later, and confirmed that yes, the clothes were micks, and no, he was not wearing Marcus's underwear.

and how did callum come to not have the appropriate clothes for the prize giving? he forgot to read his email. and mick for some reason just so happened to have an entire spare set of clothes and also let callum borrow his custom Louis Vuitton belt. and thus is shirtgate.

ok and now flash forward to 2026:

following coming second in the 2020 f2 championship, callum nearly got a seat at haas (alongside mick) but haas was broke and needed money so the seat ultimately went to Nikita mazepin (who once punched callum in the face actually, and also was later banned because his father was funding the Russian Ukrainian war on the side of Russia and that same father was sponsoring haas but that's a different story), so he signed a test and reserve driver contract at alpha Romeo (which became stake and now Audi). in 2022 callum moved to indycar at juncos hollinger where he was for two seasons before getting kicked off the team because people kept trying to dox him and the team didn't want to do anything about it and also this had something to do with his horrible teammate and he got fired. 2024 left him without an indycar seat so he went to wec and raced with jota where he actually won a few things, but also ended up subbing in in indycar at McLaren after David malukas broke his wrist a few weeks before the start of the season, but that ultimately went nowhere because he got replaced by theo pourchaire. in 2025 he got a seat in indycar at prema at their newly formed team and his car was broken half the time and then the team lost all their funding and now doesn't really exist. so now in 2026 he has a seat in imsa at the team wright racing. but there is still speculation that prema is going to get bought and come back to indycar on a one driver team (the other driver was Robert schwartzman) and callum would get the seat and they might be back for Long Beach but they might not! but callum has yet to take indycar driver for prema out of his bio and keeps teasing that he's still an indycar driver. so who knows what the fuck he's doing.

and why does this matter? im so glad you asked.

mick shcumacher, following winning the 2020 f2 championship signed an f1 contract at haas. where he was psychologically tortured for two years by then team principal and drive to survive star Gunther Steiner, the car itself (which did not work, people say that mick had a lot of crashes and DNFs in f1 but don't take into account that most of them were due to technical failures because again haas was broke) and also his horrible teammate Nikita mazepin. haas dropped him for 2023 and he went to Mercedes as the test and reserve driver. in 2024 he was still the Mercedes test and reserve driver but was also racing for alpine in wec and then in 2025 just did wec. its a well known fact that mick has wanted to get back into single seat racing (ie, not wec which is endurance racing, totally different and you and your teammates swap out over the course of the race). he was up for several f1 seats over the course of 2024 and 2025 (he was one of the options to replace Logan sargeant in Williams mid 2024, James vowels the team principal ended up insulting mick and micks mom Corinna flew all the way to Italy to the Monza race when mick had a wec race in Texas that same weekend to hit James vowels with her handbag, he was also up for the alpine f1 seat, the Cadillac seat and the Mercedes seat and Carlos's Williams seat) but ultimately did not get any of them. what he did get though! was a seat in indycar at rahal letterman lanignan racing (RLL). which is very exciting for him!