Ilott on Juncos Hollinger: “We should be able to get a podium”

The former Formula 2 ace told Motorsport.com: “I think if everything goes right on a good weekend, we could win. But that's not really the target. I think we should be able to get a podium, or maybe more: we definitely have the potential to do that.

“Even last year, I think the first Indy road course race [Grand Prix of Indianapolis], we made a mistake with the strategy with like eight laps to go, and that sent us from a pretty much guaranteed podium position to P17 and then I had to work my way back up again. So I think yeah, definitely, podiums are on the table where everything is going well.

“But for me, it's the consistency. If we can consistently finish inside the top 10 and less of this variability of being P20 or suddenly P9, I would like to be there and always there. That is where you can really show what you're doing and where we're at with the team. 

Callum Ilott, Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: IndyCar Series

“I would like that to be the first starting point when we go to St. Pete, Texas, and Long Beach. We struggled there last year, I would like to come in straight away with a decent qualifying, get those weekends in the bag with top10s, not try and do too much and make mistakes. And then we work from there, because for sure, there will be weekends where the car is working better, there will be weekends when the car is working worse. And you've just got to be methodical.”

Despite driving for the only one-car team in the IndyCar Series last year, Ilott was able to qualify in the top dozen on six occasions, culminating in a remarkable front-row start at the season finale at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Given that he’d raced on only three of the tracks prior to 2022 (Portland, Long Beach and Laguna Seca), it was a strong effort. No less impressive was the fact that he finished 11^th and 12^th in the two Iowa Speedway rounds, despite having zero experience of ovals prior to the season. Consequently he says that he’s imbued with far more confidence when looking to the season ahead.

“I'd say I'm a lot more relaxed,” he remarked. “It's a nice confidence boost going into all these tracks and knowing what I expect to experience having done it before.

“I think with the team, it can only be better because we spent the time to work and improve in lots of lots of areas. And of course, personally, over the winter, being able to digest and think about everything. I feel ready to go, I feel better, and stronger.”

With Juncos Hollinger having expanded to run two full-time entries in 2023, Ilott said the squad has had to “hire quite a few people, I think maybe close to 14, 15, 16 guys and girls… we've got a 50 percent increase, which is a lot of people in the grand scheme of things.” But he says this spurt of growth has already paid off, as demonstrated in the Thermal Club test. Ilott was seventh fastest at the end of Day 1, and fourth fastest on Day 2, even shading Team Penske’s champion Will Power to be fastest Chevrolet runner.

“I think we just improved in a lot of small areas,” said the 24-year-old from Cambridge, UK. “It's not like we found one area and massively improved off of that. It's just all the small things I think they were working away on and fine-tuning over the winter. Adding all of that up creates a better platform, a better beginning. I'm talking about not only setup stuff, but just in procedures and communication. It's all the little things that really make a difference when you add it all up.”

Ilott is joined this year by Agustin Canapino, an Argentine like team founder and co-owner Ricardo Juncos. The touring car legend has negligible open-wheel experience and is already 33, so faces a daunting task to get up to speed, yet he, too, was impressive at Thermal. Despite it being a 100sec lap of a hair over three miles, Canapino was 0.78sec off Ilott on Day 1, 0.86sec behind on Day 2, and both days he finished in 21^st, ahead of series veterans such as Graham Rahal and Conor Daly. The performance left Ilott impressed.

Agustín Canapino, Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: IndyCar Series

“We have to work with Agustin and make sure he is consistently doing the right things,” he said. “The test showed he's got good pace already to start and he was really professional.

“But I know how tough it is as a rookie and I think the better we prepare him, the better as a team we end up going and we want to show we're doing a good job.”

He later added: “Thermal was really good [for Canapino] to get an experience of all the different types of corners. Sebring is quite low speed and it's very bumpy but there's not much change other than first and second gear. Whereas [at Thermal] we had fourth- and fifth-gear corners, which were super fast. The car is on the edge.

“If anything, I expected Agustin to be a lot worse in the high-speed just because of the knowledge of aerodynamics you have to have. But he was straight away quite quick there. And it's just the last little bit… You know, it adds up: if you're half a tenth off in each corner, it adds up to a lot, I think he was a bit tired at the end, but it was fairly impressive.”

“It's so hard to come into this championship, especially with no single-seater experience, and expect to be there. And he exceeded my expectations at the test, honestly.”

Ilott admitted he had also warmed to his teammate as a person.

“He's a great guy,” he said. “Super nice, super honest. And I respect him a lot for learning English in three months! He's done a great job there. So I'm really happy to have him as a teammate.”