Sensational Shwartzman: how Indy 500 rookie took shock pole

In 2021, he was named a Ferrari F1 reserve driver and spent 2022 on the sidelines as a race seat in F1 failed to materialise despite his success in F2.

He returned to racing in 2023 in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, driving a Ferrari from AF Corse. Although he was released from the Ferrari Driver Academy that year, he retained the Italian squad’s reserve F1 driver role and took part in a couple of Friday practice sessions and in post-season testing, also driving for Sauber.

In 2024, Shwartzman competed in the World Endurance Championship, again with AF Corse, driving one of Ferrari’s 499P hypercars. He was in contention for victory at Le Mans until late in the race when a car failure brought retirement.

At the end of the year, he announced he had left Ferrari to reunite with Prema in 2025 for the Italian squad’s first season in IndyCar.

The road to Indy 500 pole

At the start of May, Shwartzman had no prior oval experience and faced a steep learning curve at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when the running kicked off.

Prema had a disastrous start to its Indy 500 adventure, with its cars not ready on time for the first practice session despite a long delay due to rain.

When it finally did run, Shwartzman and team-mate Callum Ilott managed a combined total of 22 laps and finished at the bottom of the times.

The lack of track time put the team at a disadvantage in understanding car behaviour and gathering crucial data for both race and qualifying set-ups.

But while the team might be new to the scene, its senior staff certainly aren’t. Shwartzman’s engineer is Eric Leichtle, a former race engineer for Team Penske who then moved to Space X as a senior structures engineer. He’s on secondment for a month, helping Prema build a different type of rocketship. Ryan Briscoe, a seven-time IndyCar winner, has been coaching the rookie.

The team’s head of R&D is Robert Gue, who joined after almost 15 years at Arrow McLaren, and the team replaced experienced technical director Michael Cannon, who left ahead of this season apparently doubting the team’s preparedness, with Mario Gargiulo who was part of its F2 and F3 campaigns.

They appear to have had the confidence to delay running on Tuesday while small issues were fixed, so the car was in optimum condition for the fortnight ahead. And as they moved closer to qualifying, the pace improved. By Friday, the cars were 13th and 18th in practice, and then came qualifying weekend.

Ilott qualified a respectable 23rd, but Shwartzman secured himself a spot in the following day’s top-12 shootout by virtue of the sixth fastest run of the day. He went better on Sunday, ending the Fast 12 session in third, which put him into the final battle for pole: the Fast 6.

Shwartzman was fourth on track, aiming to beat a blistering 232.478mph average speed over four laps from Takuma Sato, and was ahead from the very first lap, ending his run with a sensational 232.790mph average. The scene was set for a major upset, but at that point it looked too good to be true with the mighty combination of Pato O’Ward and Arrows McLaren to follow… until they fell short. O’Ward’s time was only good enough for third, and when Felix Rosenqvist failed to come close, the crowd erupted: Schwartzman and Prema were polesitters on their very first attempt.

As well as finding his pace, the rookie also appears to be at home in the series. “When I was in Europe, it seemed that all of the drivers were just against each other,” he said. “There was nobody talking, nobody helping. There was so much tension between drivers.

“I understand why. When you’re going to Formula 3, Formula 2, you want to stand out to get the chance in Formula 1. You need to show yourself as something special. Therefore the mentality of drivers were different.

“Here it seems that everybody is way more supportive. It’s way more enjoyable. It’s a competition, but at the same time, it’s way more respectful. I really like it.”

The next chapter in this remarkable story will be written on Sunday. Despite their pole, Shwartzman and Prema remain very much underdogs going into Sunday’s race, as as the team and Shwarzman’s inexperience, combined with the unique demands of the Indy 500 make the event a very different beast than qualifying.

However, only two weeks ago, it appeared as if Shwartzman and his team would be struggling to just make the 33-car field.