INDIANAPOLIS — Four days after becoming the first rookie to win the pole for the Indianapolis 500 since 1983, Robert Shwartzman was still basking in the limelight.
It had been a whirlwind few days for the Israeli pilot of the No. 83 PREMA Racing machine.
“Yeah, initially before qualifying I thought we’ll finish it on Sunday, then we’re going to have a couple of days of chilling, relaxing, then focusing on the race,” Shwartzman said Thursday. “All of a sudden, I take pole position. The moment I jump out of the car, they stick the camera right in front of my face and say, ‘Let’s go.’ I couldn’t even see my team. It was just so fast. They brought me in here. There was interview after interview. It was just crazy.
“I finish at 11:00, arrive at home at 12:00. The next morning I had to wake up at 6:00 because at 7:00 I had already another interview. And from then on it just started again.
“So this amount, a lot of, let’s say, talking and interviews and podcasts and videos and stuff, I’ve never experienced in my life, in my career, that amount. In F-1 they hit quite a bit, but it was way shorter. It was not as big as you guys have it here.”
With Carb Day on Friday, Shwartzman’s focus turns to preparing for The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
“We’re all trying to now focus on the race and try to get our best from the car to have the most comfortable environment starting the race,” Shwartzman said. “It’s 200 laps. Probably the conditions are going to be changing a bit. From what I’ve seen, I’ve never raced on the oval, but you can get a bit of traffic. We’ll try to find a good way for having a good car for all of these conditions.”
Carb day will be key in his team’s preparation.
“We need to use wisely this Carb Day. I like the name of it, it’s actually fun day. I come from karting,” he said. “We used to have a lot of playing with carburetors. Carb Day is quite cool.
“We’ll see how we’re going to go on Sunday. We’ll have two guys (Takuma Sato and Pato O’Ward) quite experienced, one guy that won twice (Sato), one guy (O’Ward) that really wants to win. Big hunger. Twice super close to winning it.
“For sure it’s going to be a big challenge for me, but at the same time I want to learn, I want to experience, I want things going smooth.”
Shwartzman knows the race is not won on the first lap.
“I try to be calm throughout all the race,” he said. “From what we’ve seen, the race is decided on the last lap. Just hopefully be there at the top battling with the guys for the win.”
