Michael Andretti didn’t mince words when discussing the current state of the IndyCar Series and its proposed charter system on Friday during the build-up to the season opener on the Streets of St. Petersburg and issued a de facto ultimatum to series owner Roger Penske —
Invest into the series or sell it to someone who will
Speaking to a small group of reporters that included the Associated Press and Indianapolis Star, Andretti fielded a question about the charter system and a provision that included a $1 million buy-in from each participating team and immediately scoffed at the notion.
Andretti laughed and called the proposal comical.
“First of all, $20 million isn’t going to do anything,” Andretti told the scrum. “You’ve got to have five times that number — at least. And it’s like, ‘Don’t take our money, Roger. You bought the series. We don’t own the series.'”
Penske purchased the IndyCar Series alongside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2019 and successfully navigated the COVID-19 pandemic but his stewardship has suffered numerous PR crises over the past year …
The loss of Texas Motor Speedway from the schedule
The dissolution of its video game contract with Motorsport Games
Honda threatening to leave … and potentially joining NASCAR
The season ending spectacle in Downtown Nashville being canceled
The delay of the hybrid system
Andretti also wasn’t tolerant of the rebuttal that Penske was simply trying to avoid breaking the bank and relying purely on a budget set from the Indianapolis 500 and NASCAR’s annual stop at the World Center of Racing.
“Then sell the series,” Andretti said. “There’s people out there willing to do it. I think there’s a lot of people on the sidelines thinking, ‘This is a diamond in the rough if you do it right.’ But what you need is big money behind it to get it to that level, and if he’s not willing to do it, I think he should step aside and let someone else buy it.
“I told him, ‘Why don’t you sell part of the series to somebody to use that money, as an equity stake.’ You still keep that control but take that money and invest it but he doesn’t want any partners.”
Even before falling at risk of losing on of the two OEMs, alongside Chevrolet, Andretti says Penske needs to be pursuing more than one additional manufacturer. He says the technical regulations need to reflect that in ways they currently do not.
He did offer what those rules should look like.
Andretti also took exception with how IndyCar is presented in spaces like Victory Lane, or the paddock, something he said more resembled club racing than a major North American sanctioning body.
“We need a big influx of cash, in order to go out and do what these other series do to make them worth all that money. It does seem like if we can give Roger things that make sense, he’d be open to do them,” Andretti said. “We still do have the best series in the world that no one knows about, and we just need to get it out there for people to know what it’s about.
“I think Roger has to decide where he wants to go. Does he want to make this an elite series, a world series that you can put in front of the world? Or do you want to keep it at the level that it is?”