MONTEREY, Calif. — On a Northern California day where the weather started overcast and rainy, reminiscent of the climate in his home country, the United Kingdom, Callum Ilott recorded a hugely positive sixth-place finish, a best-ever result for 2025 NTT IndyCar Series debutant Prema Racing.
Ilott took the green flag for Saturday’s (July 27) Java House Grand Prix of Monterey all the way back in 24th place, one spot ahead of his teammate Robert Shwartzman but made up an impressive 18 spots to finish one position behind seven-time champion Scott Dixon and one place ahead of two time champion Will Power enough to win him his first Josten’s Biggest Mover Award of the season.
“It’s just been a collection of putting things together and we’ve had this pace at times this year and just getting better and better,” Ilott said after the race.
“Mid-Ohio was a point where we kind of started to put the races together, and Toronto was our best finish and now this is our best finish. So, really proud of what the teams managed to achieve and even from the pit stops to the pace to Chevy, we’ve done a great job. Hopefully this is the start of more of these, but yeah, pushing the boundaries a bit.”
PREMA Racing consultant, Ryan Briscoe, who won eight times in 131 NTT IndyCar Series starts, was ebullient when discussing Ilott’s finish.
“Again, another best result of the year with a top sxi here,” Briscoe told Frontstretch after the race.
“Biggest mover of the race, we had great strategy, great pit stops, and then Callum honestly just drove the perfect race. I mean, we had the pace, he saved fuel, looked after the tires, you know, kept it clean, never put a wheel off the track and he’s just an absolute pro, so he deserved the result, and I am super happy for him and the whole team.”
One big advantage for Ilott on the day was being able to extend the life of the red tires vis-à-vis his competition.
“Yeah, they [the red tires] came in well, I tried to nurture them a bit and they just, they just hung in there,” Ilott said.
“I think I started to move around a bit at the end. The restarts didn’t help when you dropped the temperature and had to try and get it back up again, but they’ve been a strong tire, we felt it in the warm up yesterday and knew that that was what we were gonna run.”
So, after a season-best eighth place in the Grand Prix of Toronto and another season-best sixth place finish for Ilott, the question turns to what can be achieved in the final three races of the year.
“We just want to keep, keep up this great performance, keep building as a team,” Briscoe said. “But, Milwaukee, it’s going to be a brand new track for Callum and Robert; neither of them has ever been there, so that’s gonna be a big challenge, especially with it being a two-day event.
“But, we’ve been super fast on the short ovals this year, so we’ve got two ovals coming up. Our performance with both cars has been really strong there. Callum’s run really strong in Portland before, so yeah, we’ve got high expectations. We just want to keep running at the front, keep racking up these top-10 finishes.”
Danny starts his 12th year with Frontstretch in 2018, writing the Tuesday signature column 5 Points To Ponder. An English transplant living in San Francisco, by way of New York City, he’s had an award-winning marketing career with some of the biggest companies sponsoring sports. Working with racers all over the country, his freelance writing has even reached outside the world of racing to include movie screenplays.