Prema makes a mighty impressive start in St. Pete qualifying

03/01/2025 05:39 PM

Prema Racing out-qualified the Ed Carpenter Racing and Juncos Hollinger Racing teams as a whole in its first IndyCar Series race with rookie Robert Shwartzman's run to 18th in the No. 83 Chevy.

If that achievement wasn't impressive enough on its own, Shwartzman did it after turning his first laps at St. Petersburg on Friday where he was able to complete 20 tours of the Floridian street course. But he didn't get many Saturday morning during the session where teams work on their final qualifying adjustments as radio problems kept him on pit lane for most of the time; he snuck in 10 laps at the end and placed 27th and last.

This meant the former Ferrari F1 test driver had the least amount of experience heading into time trials, and while 18th usually isn't a cause for celebration, Shwartzman displaced veterans like Santino Ferrucci, Graham Rahal, Alexander Rossi, and others with years of experience.

“Overall I don’t think it was a bad qualifying because of all the issues we had in free practice," Shwartzman said. "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 I've experienced before.

"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.”

Veteran teammate Callum Ilott wasn't as fortunate and will start 27th and last.

“It was not a solid qualifying," he said. "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 forward.”