Here you find the build article for the Mi9 which I posted in May this year: – Schumacher Mi9 – Detailed Presentation

The 2024 summer was very special and extremely interesting for me as this was the first time I had the chance to test three newly released top level touring cars back-to-back over a complete season.

For the first half of this summer, the car I did the most testing with was the Mi9, after which I focused more on the 421, while also running the Axon TC10/3 every now and then.

The biggest surprise was how different these three cars felt on track.

I will do a separate post on the TC10/3 later, so for now let’s concentrate on the Mi9.

Just like the 421, the Mi9 was tested on three different tracks – you can see these in the 421 summary article.

With the car winning everywhere in the run-up to and after its release, the expectations were of course high, but it’s fair to say that I struggled more than expected in the beginning of the summer with the Mi9.

You could feel straight away that this is or can be a very fast car, as it felt really free – both the drivetrain and how it kept its speed up through corners. But in the low grip conditions that I was forced to run in during early summer it often felt a bit too difficult, like it was floating on the track surface too much and not giving the confidence to really push the car.

With new tyres or when the track temperature got quite high it always felt better, but still you always needed to be super active and precise on the steering wheel.

Step-by-step things got gradually better though, and as track conditions improved this seemed to help the Mi9 more than the other cars. Besides normal setup refinements, real step improvements came when the split top decks finally became available (after being sold out for a long time), and when I started running Xray XLP springs instead of the Schumacher/Core RC springs.

The main difference to the 421 was that car always felt easy to drive, and with an average (?) driver like me this resulted in a difference where I felt I could push that car to (my) 100%, while with the Mi9 I could usually not push over 95%. And still I needed to be more on my toes when driving it. This got better and better though, and in the end it was not as pronounced – but still there.

Looking at times, the result was that best laptimes were always super close, but I would typically be a couple (~1-2) seconds slower over 5 minutes with the Mi9.

Like I mentioned in the 421 summary, the 421 was not as much faster as it felt better – and if we turn this around it meant that the Mi9 was faster than how it felt. This is an overriding impression that has always been there with the Mi9 since the first tests, and therefore I’m not surprised that it acheives great results in top level racing. Drivers winning races are usually very good drivers (!) 🙂 and race conditions at bigger events are almost always better and higher grip compared to the tracks I usually run at.

My feeling is that the Mi9 excels in higher grip conditions and for a good enough driver there is lots of performance to drag out of the car if you just have a higher than average ability.

Another feature of the Mi9 is that there seems to be slightly less drop-off late in a run compared to most other cars. This ties in with the observations that it works well in high track temp conditions and that it feels light on track, like it’s not overworking the tyres. The downside of this is that maybe sometimes you struggle to put enough energy into the tyres, especially when you run a 17.5T motor like I did all summer on all cars.

I’m fairly sure these traits are a result of seriously developing a car to win major races, especially in the modified class, as drop-off late in runs has always been an issue at high level modified racing.

With the Mi9 I have not have any reliability problems throughout my testing, although I never had any serious crash with the car either. The drivetrain has held up very well with no need to replace any parts so far.

I really liked the gear diff on the car already when I built it and it has proven to be super smooth and with no issues at all. The smaller 6x10mm diff bearings also has not caused any issues. The dampers work well but you do need to service them fairly regularly.

I never felt that I had to constantly put the car on a setup station, as when I did, the settings had usually stayed fully consistent. This is a sign of a well engineered and produced suspension.

My feeling after building the Mi9 was that it is a really well designed car that has been properly developed and refined. After a season of running, this feeling remains, and the Mi9 certainly has introduced a few ideas which I think we will see on several other cars in the near future. Especially impressive is how they have cut weight (and size) on many components, with its low unsprung mass perhaps the biggest standout feature. Despite being an overall conventional design that is easy to understand, the car is super light with an especially low CG.

In my opinion it is a car that has been developed at (and to) a high level – made to perform and win at the highest level of TC racing. For a more average driver in more average conditions that might sometimes mean that it is not as confidence inspiring as you would hope, so perhaps this is something that can developed in the future, i.e. broadening the window where the car is both fast and easy to drive.

It will also be really interesting to see where Schumacher takes the Mi9 from here – i.e. what will be the next developments? I can’t wait to see this.