Written by Dan Jones
After decades of success supporting young talent on the path to Formula One, PREMA Racing will embark on their biggest challenge yet in 2025 as they add IndyCar to their motorsport portfolio, fielding two full-time entries as they try and compete with some of the greatest entities in motorsport.
A team that has nurtured the likes of Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, PREMA's reputation in Europe is second-to-none, claiming five Formula 3 championships in just six seasons in addition to a further two team's titles in Formula 2.
Winning is certainly in PREMA's DNA, but IndyCar provides a very different test to what PREMA has experienced on the junior F1 ladder.
It's line-up is one of ambition too. Callum Ilott returns to the team, eight years after he finished fourth with the outfit in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship, as he returns full-time to the series after a year on the sidelines.
Alongside Ilott is Robert Shwartzman, who raced for the team between 2018 and 2021, claiming the F3 title in the meantime.
Romain Grosjean, who similarly to Ilott, was controversially dropped from Juncos Hollinger Racing, has been signed as the team's reserve driver for the season.
Eight-time IndyCar race winner Ryan Briscoe has also been signed as the team's reserve driver, some 25 years after he made his first appearance with the team in Formula Renault 2000 in Italy.
What convinced both drivers to make the switch?
Ilott has effectively been on the IndyCar sidelines for a year now, but stated he was aware of PREMA's IndyCar intentions at the end of 2023, which is when he first contacted team owner, René Rosin, making clear his ambitions to return to the sport.
Following a successful year in the World Endurance Championship, including a victory in the 6 Hours of Spa, Ilott's intentions were to continue in the series, stating he 'was enjoying' his time there.
Ilott had previously been persistent in contacting Rosin, but had heard nothing until late in the driver market window.
However, once his future in WEC looked sorted, Rosin stated to Ilott: 'Yeah let's do it.' It seemed a simple decision for Ilott, who described PREMA as the "perfect way to get back in."
Shwartzman's only previous experience in an Indy car was in a Chip Ganassi Racing car at Sebring International Raceway at the start of 2023.
Shwartzman was exploring options to race in the series after that test, but found there to be no spaces in the driver market, as well as having contractual conflictions with his F1 reserve role.
However, PREMA joining the series came at a perfect time in Shwartzman's career.
Similarly to Ilott, Shwartzman's 2024 was spent in the World Endurance Championship racing a Ferrari for AF Corse alongside Robert Kubica and Ye Yifei, winning the 6 Hours of COTA.
Ilott's intentions were to remain in WEC, but Shwartzman's certainly weren't, stating the series was 'not for me,' stating his dislike for having to share a car, and the lack of driving that comes with it.
Single-seater options are now limited. Shwartzman's F1 opportunities have since sailed, but his love of racing in the US convinced himself to push for IndyCar rather than Formula E:
"I really liked and loved the racing in U.S. and the competition, and because the cars are quite similar alike to each other, so it's much more for me up to the driver in this series to make the difference, let's say."
The difficulty would be finding an entity willing to take a gamble on Shwartzman considering the highly competitive nature of the IndyCar driver markets in recent years, but PREMA provided Shwartzman the perfect opportunity in.
"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 a right moment to push for IndyCar."
"So it happened, everything in that sense. I think it's like meant to be. And there we are. For me, I'm very happy where I am. I'm happy with the team I'm driving with. As I said, it's just happened so that I've already been looking for the series for quite a few years."
What are the expectations?
Even with Ilott's ambitions, he knows that it will be difficult to assess where PREMA will stack up at an early stage:
"I'd like to answer [any benchmarks he has] probably after the first two, three races, see where we start and then where we go from there, because the street courses could be one way, road courses another way, and then the ovals is a another question.
Until I've done one of each, I think then I'll be able to kind of set the tone for that."
"End of the season, I don't see a reason why we can't be pretty competitive. At the beginning, we could be great, could be not. Whatever it is, it is."
Shwartzman is equally non-committal to where PREMA's performance level is likely to be:
"At the beginning, who knows. We don't know how much we're going to struggle. Is it going to be very difficult, medium, light? I have no idea.
We'll see. But in any circumstance, I will do my best to always deliver. And again, I don't feel any pressure because everything is new to me here."
However, like Ilott, Shwartzman sees PREMA's IndyCar venture as a long-term project, and wants to do his part in taking PREMA to the front of the IndyCar field:
"I want to, with the team, bring it up from scratch, up to the top. That's the target. I think that's the best part and that's the process where I will enjoy it the most. To go to a team who is already dominating, it's good.
It's nice, because it's a high chance you're going to win with them and bring results. But your own part, you would not feel like it.
You already went to a buildup project. But to build your own one and bring it up to the winning side, that's another story. That's what I want to do, and that's what I'm here for."
"We come here and I have zero pressure. I just want to enjoy. 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.
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."
What does Shwartzman expect from his rookie season?
"Not actually."
The immediate words of Shwartzman when he was asked if he's nervous heading into his rookie season.
"I have only to learn and to gain. Therefore that was also part of the decision that I've done to come here, is to finally feel back that excitement of racing and learning and working with your team and come basically from zero to here."
Shwartzman has been mightily successful with PREMA in his four years with the organisation. He finished third in the 2018 FIA Formula 3 European Championship with two victories followed by his F3 title success the following year.
In two seasons of F2, Shwartzman claimed six victories on his way to fourth and second in the standings respectively.
His success on the road to F1 ladder has inserted a winning mentality into the 25-year-old, but that is unlikely to be the case with PREMA, at least in the short-term.
"We are rookies. We have nothing to lose. We have only to gain. So that's the mentality, you get nervous when you have something to lose, that thing when you can lose your name, your status or something or a race you are leading. I feel fully excited. Everything is new."
Ilott will be playing a mentorship role for Shwartzman, who is in the hunt for Rookie of the Year alongside Rahal Letterman Lanigan's Louis Foster and Dale Coyne Racing's Jacob Abel for those honours.
Shwartzman's WEC campaign in 2024 was his first full-time season in any car since 2021, since playing a mixture of reserve roles in F1 and Formula E.
Shwartzman has experience in different disciplines, but Ilott still thinks there will be plenty of eye-openers for the Israeli-Russian.
"I think aside from the obvious part, the ovals, it's going to be the length of the races, kind of the strategy, the fuel saving. He's probably had experience of all those things but not in the same way.
With World Endurance Championship, which we both just came from, there is fuel saving, the races are long, but it's less intense. The fuel saving is less important a bit more automated, so coming here, it's just full attack."
"And then beyond that, I think the fast-paced nature of the weekend, the season. Once it starts, it doesn't stop. I think you kind of realize those things by mid-season.
But he's ready.
He doesn't know what he's ready for yet, but he's one of those guys you just take, put in and drive and he'll be fine."
Shwartzman certainly understood the risk in picking a rookie in PREMA's IndyCar debut, but thinks his previous success with the team played an important role:
"Well, I'm really, really happy and thankful for the team for their trust because when we had the discussion, they had a lot of other drivers, other opportunities, and obviously there are some drivers who have more experience in America than I do.
"So 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."
"At that stage it was pretty clear that none of us had any doubts about each other. We understand that we need some time, obviously, because everything is new and we need to set up the whole team."
Can Ilott's experience lead the team forward?
Despite only two full-time seasons in IndyCar, Ilott in many ways comes in as the experienced figure in the team.
The Briton also has experience in racing for a 'new' IndyCar outfit when he was under a single-car operation at Juncos Hollinger Racing in 2022, the first time they had run a full IndyCar campaign, before they expanded to two cars the following year.
On the face of it, it may seem like a similar process in building up a new team from scratch, but Ilott does not see it the same way:
"It's a completely different situation because even with JHR we were very fortunate with the Carlin merger but a lot of what we'd had had been from previous Indy 500s and had been built up. So there was quite a good storage facility of stuff."
"With us [PREMA], it is kind of everything we need we have to find or build and start from scratch.
"It's quite an odd thing, especially for some of the people within the team that have been in other INDYCAR teams to kind of go, um, where do we get this? We're going to have to order it; going to have to wait a little bit."
Ilott is the senior driver in the team, despite only having 38 races under his belt. He ran three races at the end of 2021 with Juncos Hollinger Racing before two full seasons with the team.
Ilott also ran three races with Arrow McLaren in 2024, substituting for the injured David Malukas, including that of the Indianapolis 500.
Even if Ilott is relatively inexperienced in his IndyCar career, he still knows what to expect with the PREMA project:
"The thing I've learnt from my previous endeavors was to be patient. With PREMA we're going to have to be patient. You never know at which point it kind of clicks and the results start coming."
As Ilott noted further: "INDYCAR is another ballgame. We're going to have to work hard. It's not going to be easy, and especially not with everyone else having the same car for 10+ years. We're going to have a steep learning curve."
A significant personnel loss
PREMA had signed veteran engineer, Michael Cannon, in the off-season, who Ilott had described as the "Einstein of IndyCar" due to Cannon's great success with multiple outfits, recently shown at A.J. Foyt Racing, and his prowess at the Indianapolis 500.
However, Cannon departed the team just over a month after signing stating that the 'majority of my advice and counsel was being disregarded or simply ignored.'
'It was my opinion that my time at PREMA was not going to be used wisely and I thusly resigned my position'
It is a huge blow for the team as Cannon was expected to mould the team into a competitive outfit, most importantly, at the Indianapolis 500, with PREMA now relying on their mix of European and American personnel to fix the hole left by Cannon.
The latest development in the process
And just over a month before PREMA makes it's IndyCar debut on the Streets of St. Petersburg on March 2nd, a big box was checked off when it completed it's first test at the Thermal Club on January 28th.
The team noted that the focus of the test was on race procedures, and notably, pit stops. Shwartzman's role at the test was 'track familiarisation,' with over 100 laps completed at close of play.
Briscoe stated that the test was "quite promising," despite both cars having sensor issues in the morning of the test, with Ilott only able to do installation laps, before more smooth sailing in the afternoon.
The team opted to end the test seven minutes early due to rain, and after a day of clean running and the team still awaiting for some parts to arrive, did not want to chance the wet conditions.
“It’s just a test day, but it was promising,” Briscoe concluded. “It’s a big morale booster for the whole team. They should be quite proud. There’s a lot of work to do and lot to learn moving forward, but this was a really solid first day.”
Shwartzman noted: "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."
"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," added Ilott.
"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.
"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."
The Final Countdown
As noted initially by Ilott, it's near impossible to set any expectations for PREMA heading into 2025. It may have a team with bulletproof credibility on the European ladder but IndyCar will present a challenge unlike any other the team has faced.
It will field the only unchartered entries of the season, meaning they will need to qualify themselves for any race that the entry list exceeds 27.
It is unlikely to be an issue, but another obstacle that they may face in it's debut IndyCar season.
Both drivers see it as a long-term project but one that will need patience and time in order to be competing for victories on a regular basis.
PREMA's addition to IndyCar is further vindication that the series is attracting global interest, and PREMA will be setting the benchmark for further teams who have stated that they are interested in entering the series.
That's why 2025 is so significant for the team, because if a team of PREMA's magnitude will struggle, that could close doors for potential further opportunities.
It's an exciting line-up mixed with experience and youth with a team of highly-qualified personnel behind them, even with the loss of Cannon.
With just over one month until the team hit the Streets of St. Petersburg for their IndyCar debut, PREMA's performance expectations can finally be answered.
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