PREMA Racing faced an eventful NTT INDYCAR Series race day at Road America, with Callum Ilott taking home his best finish of the season in a race featuring several cautions and strategic options.
The 55-lap race began with the drivers throughout the 27-strong field starting on different tire options. This included the PREMA Racing pair, with Ilott on the red-sidewalled Firestone tires, and Robert Shwartzman on the black-sidewalled hard tires.
Ilott lost a place at the start before the first caution, and hovered around the fringes of the top 10 for much of the early part of the race. He made his first pitstop at the end of lap 11, during the third caution period, switching to another set of the soft tires and gaining a place from swift work from the pit crew.
Shwartzman’s day meanwhile came to an early conclusion after a crash at Turn 12 shortly after the first restart. Starting 17th, he had made up two places before losing control under braking for the corner.
Eight cars pitted during the initial caution and went off sequence. However, as the race continued and more caution periods took place (five in total in the opening two thirds of the race), many further strategies developed.
Ilott pitted again on lap 27 for his run on the harder tires, before a dash to the flag on the soft tires after pitting at the end of lap 41.
Once most of the final stops had taken place, Ilott had dropped down to 18th but as one of the later cars to pit he was able to push more at the end of the race.
With this advantage, Ilott picked off several cars in the final laps to cross the line in 15th place to secure his best finish of 2025, after losing a place to Will Power on the final tour after passing him on the previous lap.
There is a one-week break for PREMA Racing before NTT INDYCAR Series action throughout the entire month of July, beginning with the undulating Mid-Ohio.
#83 Robert Shwartzman
“A very sad finish to the weekend here in Road America. We managed to make the car a bit better but we had an issue in FP2 where something happened under braking and I locked the rears and spun. We didn't fully figure out what was the issue and we had it in the race as well. I managed to do a pretty OK start, getting to 15th and then defending from Rinus [Veekay] I just locked the rears and lost it. It was something that just caught me by surprise; I just arrived at the corner, braked and it was like I was pulling a handbrake and the car just immediately snapped. It was a super weird feeling. Sometimes we have a good weekend sometimes a bad one. This was overall a better one, we just need to learn from it and improve ourselves for the next round.”
#90 Callum Ilott
“Overall it was a very tough race and it was super hot out there. The crew and team did a great job. From our side we just went a little backwards. I struggled to get some forward momentum at times. The car was quite on edge in areas I didn't really need it to be, so on restarts it was quite tough, but we managed to fight back. I think there was a bit more in the result if I had a bit more push to pass towards the end because we were quite a bit faster than the two guys ahead of me. We've fought that one hard, we should have come away with a bit more but at least we took home some solid points and a decent weekend and in general.”