In a day filled with practice, qualifying and a 275-lap race, PREMA Racing battled hard in the pack around Iowa Speedway.
Following a tornado warning on Friday which prevented any track action from taking place, the field had to complete as much work as possible in an interrupted Saturday morning practice.
In qualifying, the two PREMA Racing drivers Robert Shwartzman and Callum Ilott ended up close to each other. The first laps were not as strong for both cars as the second ones – Shwartzman setting the 16th-fastest speed and Ilott 17th for the first race.
At the start, there was an immediate caution before the action got underway. When the race properly began on lap nine, the PREMA Racing cars were on the move – particularly Ilott who climbed up to 15th early on.
With a caution on lap 75, the entire field opted to pit on lap 78. The PREMA Racing cars lost out a little bit in this run, but when the action resumed both cars were on the charge.
As the race approached the halfway point, Shwartzman held 18th position while Ilott moved his way up to 14th – including with a move on Christian Rasmussen with light contact.
Ilott made a stop under green flag conditions just before a second caution, which dropped him back by a couple of laps. Shwartzman also lost out in that run of pitstops.
Racing continued on lap 166, with all drivers needing to make a final pitstop.
Everyone made their last scheduled stops under green, just before another incident on lap 248. The damage to the SAFER barrier necessitated a red flag.
Action resumed on lap 261, but Ilott crashed out on the restart after recovering to be back in the mix. Shwartzman meanwhile held position in the closing stages, including on the final restart on lap 267 to finish in 20th.
Shwartzman, Ilott and the rest of PREMA Racing have a short turnaround before Sunday’s race at midday Eastern time, with Shwartzman lining up 11th with Ilott just behind in 13th.
#83 ROBERT SHWARTZMAN
"I think we had a pretty good qualifying with what we had. The balance was not perfect, but overall the car was quick and I was quite happy with what we had with the short time we had to get everything ready. In today’s race, I really struggled with the car balance; it was really difficult to drive. I had a few moments where I was close to losing the car and putting it in the wall, but I managed to keep it alive. We need to analyse overnight to see what changes we can make for tomorrow’s race, where we start from a promising grid position."
#90 CALLUM ILOTT
"We had a really fast car but it was just not a good day in the pitlane. We were slow and also very unlucky with the timing of our second pitstop early on, which put us the only car laps down. We raced back through but I managed to take too much risk with the pace increase and it didn’t end very well. We have another race for tomorrow and the positive is that the pace looks good."