PREMA Racing had a great start to their NTT INDYCAR SERIES journey at the Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg presented by RP Funding as rookie driver Robert Schwartzman will make his NTT INDYCAR SERIES race debut from 18th place on the grid after setting a fastest time of 01:00.461s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“Overall I don’t think it was a bad qualifying because of all the issues we had in free practice. We barely got any laps in, so we maximised everything we could. I also had my first experience of how the qualifying works here. Also, these tires are something new, something different to what I am used to, so it is really something to have to learn because the whole group level is extremely different to whatever I’ve experienced before. So, definitely something to work on. But for now, we have to build from where we are. Tomorrow is going to be an interesting race, the first race of the season, and let’s see how we’re going to perform from there.”
Callum Ilott will start the race from 27th and speaking following the action he said:
“It was not a solid qualifying. We need to look into it quite a bit. We just couldn’t get the tires to work and couldn’t put anything together. I think if we were able to add something, we would be a little bit closer. I think it was just a messy session and everything you want to not happen happened. We can make some changes for tomorrow and at least we can only go forwards.”