Callum Ilott knows what he is getting in joining PREMA Racing for the 2025 NTT INDYCAR SERIES.
“It’s Italian,” he said of the team. “Pasta (and) pizza).”
Ilott knows from experience. He drove for the organization based in northeastern Italy in the Formula 3 European Championship in 2017.
“It’s hard, honest, funny, fair,” Ilott said of the team founded in 1983 by Angelo Rosin. “This is one of the most honest teams I’ve seen. What you see is what you get.”
Ilott’s season with PREMA produced six wins in 30 races, and they finished fourth in the championship won by current McLaren Formula One star Lando Norris. Ilott and PREMA officials have stayed in touch over the years, with what Ilott describes as “random” conversations about the NTT INDYCAR SERIES dating back to first joining Juncos Hollinger Racing for the final three races of the 2021 season.
Ilott, who has contested 38 series races with two different teams, said he first heard about PREMA’s potential interest in fielding a U.S. team at the end of last year. He didn’t know how the program would come together, much less if he would be a part of it, until he later met with PREMA Racing INDYCAR CEO Piers Phillips.
“I was very impressed, and at that point it was quite easy to make a decision and jump over back to the (NTT INDYCAR SERIES) and start what is going to be an amazing journey,” said Ilott, who has spent most of 2024 driving for Hertz Team Jota in the World Endurance Championship. “It’s a pleasure to be back.”
Sure, PREMA will face challenges in its early days in the series, but Ilott said the team’s history of success in the European junior categories is reason for optimism.
“Whatever PREMA touches, it’s done properly, and that’s visible in every series (it) competes in, so I know that (the decision) wasn’t taken lightly to come here,” he said. “Everything is done properly from the personnel side to the performance and even the looks of everything.
“I know the team has grown quite a lot – there’s a new headquarters in Italy that was expanded and is quite impressive. I always agreed with what my friend Marcus Armstrong said: That if PREMA came to the U.S., (it) would do a great job. I think it’s amazing to see the project come to life. What a team.”
In winning 80 season titles in European junior categories, PREMA has employed talents such as 1995 Indianapolis 500 winner and 1997 F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve along with INDYCAR SERIES drivers Ryan Briscoe, Felix Rosenqvist, Armstrong and Ilott.
PREMA also has helped launch the careers of nine of the 2024 F1 drivers, including Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.
Ilott has faith in PREMA’s ability to build this program from the ground up.
“The team has a very good car normally,” he said. “(Its) package is always in a good window, and there is a good balance with every single classis in every series. That’s number 1.
“Number 2, it’s (PREMA’s) treatment of people. There’s a good vibe in and away from the track. That normally gets the most out of the people and keeps attracting more good people.
“This is going to be a different project, a newer project in the sense that it will be the first time in years for a team to start from scratch without acquiring another operation or parts of it. That’s something I have never experienced, but I worked on building something from small into big in the past. There are a lot of unknowns and a lot of working with what you have.
“You have to (try) things from what didn’t work best, but at the same time, you have to optimize what you’ve got. Sometimes there won’t be all the answers, and you just have to make it work. But at the end of the day, I think we have the right people and the right mentality.”
As for realistic expectations, Ilott said the NTT INDYCAR SERIES offers all teams a chance to be competitive, which is a plus.
"There are some high expectations, and I definitely think that some of them are achievable,” he said. “On any of those weekends if you are competitive, you can get an amazing result. You have to be there on strategy, be doing the right things, and be in the window, and in INDYCAR those things can happen. I don't doubt we can put ourselves in some good positions.
“It's obviously not going to be easy. In the road courses, we have got to be aiming for top-five (finishes). Same with the street courses, but again, that's going to require a bit of adaptation. The ovals, it's going to be one step at a time. We'll see. The first one is going to be the (Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge) and you can hit the ground running and do well in testing, but on the race weekend it can heat up a lot and you can fall out of the window. It's not that simple.
“Still, we have a lot of good people and all the right resources. There's no reason we cannot be fighting at the top and show these guys what we do."
PREMA still has its second driver to announce. Phillips said the team expects to stage its first NTT INDYCAR SERIES test in January. The 17-race season begins with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg presented by RP Funding on Sunday, March 2.