Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Veneto, Italy-based Prema Racing is preparing to become the second race team to make its U.S. home at Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport in Fishers.
Prema, which will join the IndyCar Series in 2025 as a two-car team with Chevrolet, is outfitting a 95,000-square-foot building at the northeast corner of East 96th Street and Willow View Road constructed by Fishers-based Patch Development LLC that will become its North American base of operations.
“It was the perfect fit for us,” Prema Racing CEO Piers Phillips told IBJ. “I must have looked at 30 or 40 buildings right across the Indy area, and it was one of those situations where I literally walked through the door one cold and wet Monday morning in November, and it instantly ticked the box with me. It just instantly felt right.”
Andretti Global is also in the process of building a 400,000-square-foot team headquarters as part of a massive campus at the airport. In 2015, Fishers and the Indianapolis Airport Authority reached a deal to make 211 of the airport’s 445 acres available for development.
Phillips said Prema has hired about half of the 50 team members who will begin work at the new racing shop when it is ready in November. The team will begin as a two-car operation, but he said Prema has a vision for expansion. And Prema’s International Motor Sports Association operations could move to the Fishers racing shop next year.
“We needed somewhere that, first of all, gave us the presence, yes, which it does, but also gave us the capacity to operate as we need to start off with, but also give us the ability to expand,” Phillips said.
Prema, founded in 1983 by Angelo Rosin, is led by Team Principal Rene Rosin. Along with its impending jump into IndyCar, Prema has teams that race in FIA Formula Two, FIA Formula Three, International Motorsports Association and other European series.
Phillips called IndyCar “the most challenging series I’ve ever competed in” in his 25-year career. Before Phillips joined Prema in 2022, the British native worked as general manager of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports and as president of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.
“Obviously, coming to IndyCar was the next step in the progression of the organization,” Phillips said. “It was either IndyCar or [FIA Formula One World Championship], and everyone knows what a challenge and expense F1 can be, so the IndyCar Series fit the bill perfectly, and I think it adds a great value to the organization.”
He added that Fishers was the right place to place Prema’s IndyCar operations, and Mayor Scott Fadness and Director of Economic and Community Development Megan Baumgartner helped make the city an easy choice.
“[They were] so energized and so positive, pushing so hard to make Fishers the right environment for everybody,” Phillips said. “It really fit with what I would call the brand identity of the team. It’s very upmarket, it’s very progressive, it’s very high-level.”
Prema will not be the first Italian company to land in Fishers. Italy-based life sciences firm Stevanato Group recently opened a 560,000-square-foot production facility along Cumberland Road, south of East 126th Street. The company plans to employ up to 515 people at the $512 million facility by 2031.
Fadness said Andretti and Prema provide Fishers with a motorsports cluster that complements the city’s life sciences and tech clusters.
“If you told me 12 years ago that Fishers would have a tech sector, life sciences sector and racing sector, I wouldn’t have believed you, but to have that today and to see that starting to grow is really, really exciting,” Fadness said.
In 2021, Patch announced plans to purchase 24 acres from the Indianapolis Airport Authority along East 96th Street to build 143,000 square feet of flex space in four buildings and move its headquarters from Westfield. Two buildings, including Prema’s, have been constructed, and two more have yet to be built.
Pure Pharmacy LLC, founded in 2018 in Carmel, is spending $4.5 million to lease and equip 21,000 square feet in a 30,000-square-foot building it will share with Patch Development.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.