Robert Shwartzman's 'tiny dream' of winning Indianapolis 500 pole comes to fruition

Going into qualifying for the 109th Indianapolis 500, 25-year-old Robert Shwartzman was fantasizing about winning the pole position. 

But just as quickly as he allowed himself to think about the best possible outcome for his first Indianapolis qualifying session, he shut those thoughts down. 

"I was like, 'yeah, Robert. Get back to reality," Shwartzman said in a news conference at Indianapolis Motor Speedway shortly after he won the pole for the 2025 Indianapolis 500 on Sunday afternoon. "You have a new car, a new team, you are a rookie. How can you expect to be in this position? It's just in your dreams." 

Reality presented Shwartzman with a four-lap average of 232.790 mph, more than three-tenths of a mile an hour faster than second-place Takuma Sato. 

How unexpected was Shwartzman's pole run? For starters, his new PREMA team is in the midst of its first IndyCar campaign. Shwartzman himself had never turned laps on an oval in any type of race car before practicing for the Indianapolis 500. Even after shocking the world by making the top 12 and then the Fast 6, he was competing against the likes of Alex Palou, Scott Dixon, Sato, Pato O' Ward and Felix Rosenqvist for the pole position. 

But racing, especially the 'Month of May' at Indianapolis, has a tendency to buck trends and deliver Cinderella epics that will be told until the end of time. Shwartzman's four-lap, 10-mile run at Indianapolis on Sunday is one of those. 

While he was ripping off the best four laps of life, Shwartzman managed to make enough history to fill a college lecture. Shwartzman is the first Indianapolis 500 rookie to win the pole since Teo Fabi in 1983. He's the first driver from Israel to ever qualify for the Indianapolis 500. PREMA Racing is the first first-year team to win the Indy 500 pole since 1984. 

That history isn't lost on Shwartzman. 

"I was just processing it, and I still can't believe it," he said. 

The 'tiny little dream' Shwartzman had and subsequently suppressed about winning the pole for the 'Greatest Spectacle in Racing' was realized in a Hollywood tale that just so happened to be told in Speedway, Indiana.