ELKHART LAKE, Wis. — Just over a month after Robert Shwartzman scored PREMA’s first NTT IndyCar Series pole position at the Indianapolis 500, Callum Ilott gave PREMA another accomplishment at Road America ahead of Sunday’s (June 22nd) XPEL Grand Prix.
The British racer advanced to the second round of qualifying, the first time that has happened for PREMA on a road course or street circuit since the team joined IndyCar in 2025. Ilott’s best lap of time of 1:45.2532 averaged 137.292 mph around the 14-turn, 4.014-mile natural terrain road course.
“We found a bit after the [Saturday practice] session and I didn’t think it would be as good as it was, but it was good,” Ilott said. “And then we did the black tire [run]. I think the pace was competitive. I knew there was a bit more time in me just putting it together. And yeah, I did a very good lap on the reds to transfer.”
In the first round of qualifying, Ilott was third fastest in the first group with a lap time of 1:44.8834. The No. 90 Chevrolet advanced with Alex Palou, Graham Rahal, Pato O’Ward, Kyle Kirkwood and Josef Newgarden.
In the second round of qualifying, Ilott’s best lap was two tenths of a second too slow to advance as Rahal was the final driver to move on to the Firestone Fast Six.
“The other thing was, I pushed to do the first lap in the Fast 12 on the new reds and everyone else didn’t,” Ilott said of the softer alternate compound of Firestone tires. “So I found [the rest of the cars] all in Turns 8 or 9. So I think there was also a bit more pace in it to try and transfer into the Fast Six. But yeah, we’ve just been improving and improving and finding little bits here and there.
“It’s tough because it’s so competitive. We didn’t change too much from FP1 to FP2 and you go from being, you know, knocking on the door of the edge of the top 10 and now P20 again and you’ve got to find another bit. So it’s just IndyCar.”
Ilott was 15th in the first practice session on Friday and 22nd in Saturday morning practice. A lot had to change ahead of Saturday afternoon qualifying and it did.
“We had to find the right balance, I think it was a bit off from where we started,” Ilott said. “The track’s quite higher in the macro roughness this year compared to previous (years) because it’s just breaking up a bit on the apexes. Quite a few people were trimming, so we matched them. But the other thing is the temperature, you have to kind of pre-empt it and know where it’s going to go. But yeah, we’ve got a good car on the reds, which is nice.”
The 55-lap race will air live on FOX with the broadcast starting at 1:30 p.m. ET and the race starting 22 minutes later.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.