It was a day to remember for the PREMA Racing team at The Thermal Club in California on Tuesday.
Following months of preparation which included moving into their state of the art race shop in Fishers, Indiana, the Chevrolet-powered INDYCAR team hit the track for the first time.
Robert Shwartzman and Callum Ilott were on hand to put their cars through their paces with early install laps completed along with systems checks and troubleshooting.
Robert Shwartzman commented saying:
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.”
While Robert Shwartzman is an NTT INDYCAR SERIES rookie, Callum Ilott in the second car has plenty of INDYCAR experience and speaking following the action he said:
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. 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 opening race of the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season is just one month away with the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg presented by RP Funding taking place from February 28 to March 2.