PREMA building its IndyCar highlight reel

The highlight reel for rookie IndyCar Series team PREMA Racing has been growing in recent months.

If the surprise pole position at the Indianapolis 500 with Robert Shwartzman wasn’t enough of an achievement for the stalwarts of European junior open-wheel racing, the recent run of top 10s by Callum Ilott has demonstrated the program’s immense growth during its debut season.

Ilott and the No. 90 Chevy were eighth in Toronto, sixth at Laguna Seca, and just added another sixth-place finish in Portland, and on the surface, the trio of strong results show how far PREMA has come since its first IndyCar race in March.

“I've always been saying that if we can just put it all together, we're going to have some great results,” Ilott told RACER. “And especially from the 500 onwards, we've had some really great pace. But whether it's been a pit stop or a mistake on the fuel or, a wheel gun in Detroit, we've missed out on a lot of good points and a lot of impressive finishes to build on. But I always knew that this was there, and Toronto, the qualifying was right. We got it right with the alternates (tire compounds) at Laguna and Portland. We've struggled a bit with them working in qualifying, but whatever we do in the race, the car is good, and that's super impressive.”

There’s another marker of importance to recognize, and that’s on the pit crew side, where the team – slowest by a wide margin for many races – rocketed to 10th-fastest among the 27 entries on Sunday in Portland. Across the board, PREMA is performing.

“And that gives me a chance to fight whenever I'm in clear air,” Ilott said. “And they've improved and improved on the pit stops. So that means that now I'm no longer seeing how many positions I'm going to lose; now, I can move forwards. And they've done a great job on strategy. We've got good people who’ve made really good decisions.

“It's never easy starting from the back. And of course, you can take some more risks, but they've kept calm and just done a great job. And work their asses off. So it's nice to reward them, because we've been struggling a bit earlier on, but the pace is showing and they're all doing a good job.”

PREMA features a blend of staff from its European programs and a number of IndyCar veterans, including Ilott’s race engineer Steve Barker. The pair worked together at Juncos Hollinger Racing, and have proved to be a formidable combination.

“When you start off, you have to find your feet, and especially with a new team, where everything's been bought and brand new, it's not the easiest, and we had a few loops to jump through,” Ilott said.

“Once we started to get things figured out, the general race pace has really been there and quite a lot of common sense has to be applied to things and we found the rhythm from there, and were able to work with the damper guys to get more and more out of it. And here we are.

“But my relationship with Steve... I first started working with him right at the beginning (when) Juncos and Carlin merged. He was my engineer in almost all my IndyCar races, except for the couple of stand-ins ar McLaren, so I know him well. He knows me well, and I think we've got a very good working relationship, and we know how to find our way through some of the crap sometimes.”