Prema’s stateside IndyCar adventure has officially just begun. Drivers Callum Ilott and Robert Shwartzman had their first track experience on the 28th of January at Thermal Club, during a testing session which saw on track the Andretti drivers and Coyne’s Abel.
Positive first outing
It was an extremely positive day for the Italian team, in spite of the recent departure from the team of
Technical Director Michael Cannon.
The driver duo set over 100 laps and collected a great amount of data at an extremely significant location. In fact, after hosting the no points million dollars challenge in the past season, Thermal will have a complete racing weekend in 2025.
Ilott and Shwartzman placed in third and fourth place respectively, ahead of Herta and Abel, but even more importantly, had a rather smooth track day. Prema was able to test race procedures and situations including pit stops and refuelling, on a quest to adapt to the new American championship rules and practices.
Callum Ilott had already had the chance to debut at Thermal, having competed in the Thermal challenge in the past season with Arrow McLaren. Overall, the British driver formerly at Juncos Hollinger Racing was extremely positive after his first approach with the Prema car.
“We got quite a few things to work through like any first day of testing, and once we got going properly, we had a good starting point. There’s a lot of anticipation as it’s been a long time coming for this project, so it’s amazing to see everything up and running, along with some other competitors to compare.”
Great feedback from both drivers
The experienced driver reckons there’s still a lot of work to be done ahead of the inaugural round of the season in St. Petersburg on the 2nd of March. Nevertheless, Ilott praised the good starting point Prema has been able to reach within its first months of IndyCar life.
“We worked on building a good baseline, adapting and optimizing every little thing, see what’s a good idea and what’s not. There will be some areas to improve and others where we do well. We just need to keep the pace and everything will go well.”
It was Shwartzman’s first time behind the wheel of an IndyCar challenger, and the fast drive has definitely impressed the young Russian driver:
“For this test at Thermal Club the focus was to get as quickly as possible up to pace because in INDYCAR, we don’t have many test days. We ran into a couple of small hiccups but fixed them. In the afternoon, we did stick to the programme and everything worked out well.
“We were able to log a good amount of laps and went through a solid testing programme. It’s been a while since I have been in such a fun and nice car to drive, and overall, the feeling is really really positive. We worked on getting prepared for the start of the season and the second race here at Thermal. It should be an interesting one,” he concluded, looking forward to his next outing.
