Robert Shwartzman will make his IndyCar debut in 2025 with PREMA. Returning to the team where he spent his formative years in racing.
PREMA Racing announced their NTT INDYCAR campaign in April of 2024. PREMA is the most successful junior series team with an incredible 80 titles among them.
Making the move to IndyCar, the Italian team joined the series with the resources to be successful and they chose to fill their line-up with drivers they knew well.
Callum Illot acts as the experience in the 2025 PREMA line-up, with two full seasons in the series. Illot raced with PREMA in Formula 3 and kept in contact with the team throughout his career and move to IndyCar.
Shwartzman had a long tenure with PREMA in the junior categories. He raced with them for three years, in Formula 3 and Formula 2. He became a reserve and test driver for Ferrari and despite being on the sideline for Formula One never made the full move up.
The journey back to single-seaters
The Russian-Israeli driver switched his focus to endurance racing taking part in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup in 2023 and taking part in the World Endurance Championship in 2024.
However, Shwartzman was constantly looking for a way back into a single-seater series. He spoke about his love of single-seater racing on the IndyCar content day that Pit Debrief attended.
He said, “I think when you grow up and you race in the single-seater – I’ve tried WEC, and I’ve realized that it’s not for me, at least at this stage in my life, because you have to share the car. You don’t really drive much. I want to drive. I want that feel.”
The PREMA driver took part in an IndyCar test in 2023 with Chip Ganassi Racing. Although he enjoyed this opportunity and wanted to pursue the series, there were no spaces on the grid and it wasn’t possible.
Speaking about his test he admitted, “I really wanted to join in, but at that stage, there were no space, no places, and at that stage I was working with Ferrari and Formula 1, so I had a contract there, so therefore there was not such an opportunity.”
Luckily for Shwartzman, the opportunity for IndyCar presented itself and he made the move.
He said, “the timing happened that PREMA announced they were joining INDYCAR. Again, it’s a team that I know really well, and my contract was expiring at the end of last year, so I was like, okay, this is probably the right moment to push for INDY.”
2025 expectations
With so many drivers to choose from, Shwartzman believes that PREMA chose him due to their long history despite being a rookie in the series.
He acknowledged, “For sure in one sense it’s sort of a risk for the team to go for it, but the team knows me. We worked four years together. We’ve won together. We’ve won a lot of races and we know each other really well. So we both have full trust that we can win here together.”
Coming into 2025 the PREMA driver isn’t focused on the result immediately and instead wants to enjoy his rookie season in an incredibly competitive series. “He said, I have zero pressure. I just want to enjoy it. I want to have fun. I’m sure that we’re going to have it and we’re going to come up to that level.”
However, Shwartzman is maintaining his hopes that PREMA Racing will find themselves at the front of the grid in no time.
“We’re going to come up to winning, and that’s what we are here for and that’s what PREMA showed in Europe, I showed in Europe. So we have everything. We just obviously need some time.“
“At the beginning, who knows? We don’t know how much we’re going to struggle. Is it going to be very difficult, medium, or light? I have no idea. We’ll see. But in any circumstance, I will do my best to always deliver”
