When Callum Ilott left IndyCar at the end of 2023, you wondered if you’d ever see him back there again. It felt acrimonious.
His exit from Juncios Holinger was announced as a mutual decision, but it was the kind where one party found it a bit more mutual than the other. At that point of the silly season most seats were taken - and Ilott was incredibly lucky to bounce back and land a highly-sought-after top level sportscar opportunity with Jota for 2024.
While the Juncos Hollinger team he’d left was a relative minnow, Ilott had still pulled off some impressive performances as the team effectively ran before it could walk with rapid expansion. It did a great job in the circumstances, but it was still punching above its weight - which means making people notice an elite performance can be trying to explain why you finished something like 12th in the order. It's not sexy.
Anyway, that story is in the past for new Prema Racing driver Ilott. He’s just held on to the determination to settle the unfinished business.
"Whatever happened with that is kind of in the past, it was one of those things where you're expecting to continue, and your mind wasn't focused on anything else, and then suddenly you have to, but that's the way life is," Ilott tells The Race.
"You just have to adapt and react to it and I think I ended up in a better situation than I was, and now, in my opinion, an even better one.
"So it's amazing how difficult times can make it easier later on.
"Results-wise, it was one of those things where at individual moments we shone quite well, but not enough for me to really be satisfied with it. So that's one thing where I feel like I need to come back and do it, because in everything else that I've done, I've been able to achieve more than what I did [in IndyCar]."
The unfinished business was a big part of Ilott’s decision to return. He turned his Jota WEC chance into a win at Spa and left a big enough impression in that paddock to generate significant interest in him. But IndyCar turned his head.
"IndyCar racing is just something that is unmatched, in my opinion," adds Ilott. "WEC is unique in its own way, I loved it, and the racing in its own way is great.
“There was just something about IndyCar that felt like I hadn't achieved or shown what I needed to do.
"For a lot of people, sportscar racing is tough to get into. I feel like my toes have been dipped in enough that if I was to venture back, it's entirely possible, whereas IndyCar, it's just a little bit different.
“Whether it's because it's across the pond or more than that, it's a bit tougher to get back into, as we see with a couple of guys this year who more than deserve seats, it's not easy to hold on to that. Putting all those things together, it just made sense."
Ilott has a black belt in accepting things aren't going to work out as you expect. He felt he'd done enough for a shot at Formula 1 and didn't get it, and settled for IndyCar before being jettisoned from that paddock unexpectedly.
In some ways Ilott finds himself in a similar situation to when he came to IndyCar in 2021, with a new team starting from scratch at Prema. But with Juncos, that only lasted for three races - as it then started the 2022 season with the purchase of Carlin’s information and equipment.
Prema doesn’t have that luxury. And as well-backed and -resourced as the operation is, the one thing you can’t buy is time, either for preparation or on-track. So with that in mind, Prema could have thrown a trillion dollars at the programme and it would still be coming to St Petersburg this weekend with only three days of testing and not knowing if it was really ready.
It seems to have most things sorted on the car side, with encouraging times in a small test at Thermal before setting the eighth-fastest time of the Sebring test last week. Of course, you don’t know what programmes people are running, but things look good.
It's no surprise that was possible with Ilott behind the wheel. It felt more like circumstance than a judgment on his abilities that he didn't end up in a top seat for 2023 or 2024 given that, if you look hard enough, he has everything required to be an elite IndyCar driver.
A complete unknown
The area Prema has struggled more in to start is operationally, where the team is blending new personnel with equipment that other teams have taken years or even a decade to perfect.
"It's a lot of new people from different backgrounds with new equipment, which isn't perfected," Ilott adds.
"All of that we have to dial in the same way as when I get a new seat, I have to dial it in, new position, new steering wheel.
"Every bit of the car we're having to tailor whether it's pedals, steering wheel, dashboard, buttons, seat, that's just around me.
"Imagine with the whole team, the guys with the pitstop guns. It's a big mix of stuff, which everyone has to make personal, and some things we have the time to do and some things we don’t."
As Ilott puts it, there’s no storage unit with parts in like every other team either. Even the simplest things, they either have to order and wait for - and that can take months by the way - or build them in-house.
All of this means Prema might well be massively on the back foot in the first half of the year and could struggle for pace and consistency while it gets up to speed. But there’s a belief inside the organisation that, even if it takes all season, the team can cover the ground to close the gap to the other teams.
One of the most exciting elements here is going to be charting the car set-up philosophy. It’s a single-chassis series, but with things like damper development open, teams establish their set-up philosophy in the off-season and are fixed with that baseline through the year - because if you change it, you’re impacting the rest of the car too and if you haven’t tested, you could be chasing down a rabbit warren with no sign of light.
Every other team adapts and tweaks the philosophy from the year before. Prema has had to set one from scratch, and because there’s so little testing, it still has very little idea of how its car will perform in certain conditions or scenarios. Or how its drivers will cope with its handling characteristics.
"It's really interesting when everything's brand new," says Ilott.
"Because firstly, you have to choose a baseline, and you have to work from there. There's no point choosing a baseline and then deciding it doesn't work and choosing another baseline when you haven't tested anything with that base. That's one way of thinking about it.
"And then the other thing is, obviously, we're new, we're limited in a couple of things, it's not like an easy process to make changes in that.
"So we have to be very selective of what we're going to be doing, what we need to focus on, what's important and what's not."
New kid on the block
Another undoubtedly important element in this is how the team-mates work together, with Robert Shwartzman joining Ilott as a green rookie in the team.
The 2019 FIA Formula 3 champion competed against Ilott for years and lived near him in Maranello when they were on the Ferrari junior programme together.
Like Ilott, Shwartzman has also given up a WEC seat, his with Ferrari where he has been a test and development driver, to rejoin the team he had spent most of his junior career with.
He was wanted by Formula E teams, where he was a test driver for DS Penske, and it even looked like he might make a late bid for a Sauber F1 seat before interest cooled in favour of Gabriel Bortoleto - so there’s no doubting Shwartzman’s pedigree.
"People change, people try new things. Same for me, I've done seven years in the Ferrari programme, there's been good moments, there's been bad moments," Shwartzman told The Race.
"At the end, I'm grateful for the experience and for the path I've done with Ferrari, it definitely helped me develop as a racing driver, also a professional. But unfortunately, it didn't work out that we went to Formula 1, let's say, in the same family and same programme.
"And then the decision [to join Prema], how hard was it to make? Honestly not really hard for me, because my [goal] is to enjoy racing. I want to be part of a team where I've been appreciated, where I can make the difference, where we can grow together.
"It's a big project. So everything on my list of interesting things to do in terms of in motorsport, Prema was in it."
As a rookie, Shwartzman is going to have to rely on Ilott’s two full years of experience in the series, but Ilott will also know that the quicker Shwartzman is up to speed, the more useful he will be to Ilott in providing data and helping the team’s development direction. So their fortunes are intertwined even if things look imbalanced in Ilott’s favour at an initial glance.
Both drivers have been through difficult years and have matured beyond expectation, creating a really impressive duo to start this new project.
Shwartzman is realistic over what he can do but bullish about the team’s chances as well.
"No one is under pressure, because we're rookies, so in that sense, I don't feel any pressure, but on myself, the target is to win," he says.
"I acknowledge how hard it’s going to be, and that it's probably not going to be a miracle, but I still want to believe it's possible, and maybe not straight away at the beginning.
"The championship is going to be extremely tough. That's what I like, the fact it's going to be tough, and that's where we will need to work really hard to beat them. And when we will beat them, which I believe we will, that's where the joy is going to come, that exciting emotion we're going to get."
In St Petersburg, Prema could be fighting for the top eight like it was in testing, or last and two seconds off the pace. It really is an unknown.
What is clear is that Ilott is both fiercely motivated to settle old scores and extremely mature and realistic about how long that will take and encouraging of the people he believes will take him where he wants to be.
And Shwartzman is, on paper, perfect for IndyCar and desperately wants to find his long-term home in motorsport, and is also fully invested in the team he first raced for in 2018 and has basically remained a part of since, at least in an honorary way.
It might start rockily, but if it does, you get the feeling, however long it takes, the people involved here are committed to getting things done right.
Whatever happens, even a top-15 will be something to celebrate in St Pete. It’s a 27-car grid, and top teams Andretti, Ganassi, McLaren and Penske account for 12 of those cars, and that’s before you get into the hotly contested midfield. It would be offensive to some of those teams to think Prema is going to come in and wipe the floor with them immediately.
Obviously, it’s up to you how quickly you judge this team. But internally it’s a sea of calm and belief that it will reach the level it wants to no matter how long it takes.
