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Indianapolis is the 500.
A.J. Foyt once said, “If it wasn’t for the Indianapolis 500, none of you would’ve ever heard of me.” The same might be said of Indianapolis.
IndyCar again raises questions about its ability to seriously compete with NASCAR, F1Pato O’Ward: ‘I’m quite disappointed they didn’t come to me’
For all the backlash Penske Entertainment and its president and CEO Mark Miles have received in the wake of NASCAR landing a 2025 race date in Mexico City – including jokes about billboards, harsh, public words from at least eight drivers, scathing takedowns from fans on social media and Pato O’Ward’s viral tagline during his race winner’s press conference (‘Pato who?’) – the multi-day storyline boils down to one overarching fact:
IndyCar, even under the ownership of billionaire Roger Penske, isn’t positioned to be a serious competitor for mainstream popularity against NASCAR and Formula 1.
IndyCar’s rivals’ have a willingness and ability to innovate, take risks and spend cash at levels Penske Entertainment simply can’t, or won’t.
That’s not necessarily a criticism or a fault. But it’s a reality, and it’s why we are where we are, as NASCAR begins its multi-year Mexico City deal next summer, while Miles admits that IndyCar — before and during Penske ownership — could’ve rented Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and promoted the race itself. But even if the series were to be offered a one-year deal with the track’s promoter (CIE and its subsidiary Ocesa), Miles told IndyStar on Sunday that Penske Entertainment wouldn’t sign-off on a future visit without a multi-year guarantee from a promoter willing to pay it a traditional sanctioning fee and then serve as the machine that would take the lead in building the foundation for a successful race.
“Prior to Roger’s ownership, I was down there with the Ocesa people, without a Mexican promoter, exploring (the track), and they said, ‘Yeah, if you want to rent it, we’ll rent it to you,’ but that would mean we’d have to go and find a promoter,” Miles told IndyStar on Sunday, two days after adding that even in 2021 during O’Ward’s serious title hunt, the track and it’s promoter “didn’t think it was time” to host the series with its – and O’Ward’s – current level of popularity. “And it takes a lot to get an event off the ground and organize it operationally and promotionally.
“You don’t do that for one year. Our approach for doing events is different – especially within the championship. For the championship, we want stability in markets. It’s a missed opportunity if that’s what you’re doing, and it reflects badly on the series.”
‘I think that’s a massive miss’: IndyCar drivers question NASCAR landing Mexico City race
A closer look at IndyCar, NASCAR, F1’s recent schedule evolution
It’s with that methodical way of plodding along and waiting for accepting suitors, while its closest competitors in the North American motorsports space (Formula 1 and NASCAR) have taken seismic leaps with new events in recent years, that have left IndyCar’s detractors within the paddock frustrated. Since the start of 2021, here’s what the three series have done in North America:
>>IndyCar: Revived a 1-year hiatus at Iowa Speedway into a doubleheader with mainstream musical acts; turned a test site at The Thermal Club into a widely-panned exhibition, and now a regular season event that can host only a few thousand fans; brought racing to streets around the Titans Stadium in Nashville, but then flopping on announced plans to race down Broadway, eventually landing at Nashville Superspeedway where it hadn’t raced in 16 years; and resurrecting its history at The Milwaukee Mile that was wildly successful in Year 1.
>>NASCAR: Added Nashville Superspeedway, COTA and Road America in 2021, while experimenting with Bristol dirt and the IMS road course; moved The Clash to the LA Coliseum in 2022, while also adding Gateway; ventured into street racing with Chicago in 2023, while also moving the All-Star Race to North Wilkesboro; visited Iowa Speedway for the first time in 2024; made plans to visit Mexico City in 2025 while also moving The Clash to Bowman Gray.
>>Formula 1: Gone from one race in the U.S. to three, spurring the construction of a purpose-built venue around the Miami Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium, along with the launch of one of the series’ now premier events on the streets of Las Vegas; in 2024, the U.S. is one of just two countries worldwide with more than one F1 race, and it’s the only one with more than two.
More: O’Ward responds to assertions he, IndyCar aren’t popular enough for Mexico City race
Again, without Roger Penske himself serving as a bank to spend gobs more money than it brings in, IndyCar’s not in a place to compete with these two in a spending war. Despite Penske Entertainment increased spending both at IMS (to the tune of $60 million in upgrades and upkeep) and the series at-large, it’s largely not been in ways that have led to flashy changes and a dynamism its competitors boast.
IndyCar ceding Mexico City’s next major race to NASCAR is merely a symptom of those larger business decisions and realities. Unlike NASCAR, IndyCar can’t, or won’t, spend $50 million to launch a new race (like the stock car series did for Year 1 of its Chicago race in 2023) without the certainty that there will be a Year 2
O’Ward: ‘All my efforts have been shut down’
But there are arguments to be made that if IndyCar truly wanted to capitalize on its most popular driver, it could’ve done so without an outside party. At some point, many in the paddock have argued, if you want to see change, you’ve got to spend money to make money and bet on yourself when others won’t.
As Miles noted, renting the permanent track in Mexico City has long been on the table, and O’Ward’s father says he approached Penske Corp. president Bud Denker this March at Thermal with the offer of renting the track himself – having made inroads in the market to secure track workers, security personnel and the like through his own contacts – and then partnering with the series as the race’s promoter to get IndyCar into the market as soon as possible.
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According to the O’Wards, that offer fell on deaf ears. Combined with striking down the driver’s Pato TV app – a platform that allowed its 45,000 subscribers to watch O’Ward’s onboard video live during races – because it conflicted with the capabilities of the series’ own app, NASCAR’s recent news, and the reveal that Penske Entertainment had nominated the father of Mexican USF Pro 2000 driver Ricardo Escotto and ex-IndyCar driver Michel Jourdain (who also hails from Mexico) as its proxies to seek out a future deal rather than the O’Wards, there is undoubtedly a growing frustration from IndyCar’s most popular driver in the direction of series leadership.
In the eyes of O’Ward – who himself has launched his own merchandise line and used it to create ticket packages and giveaways for his fans, first at Texas Motor Speedway and now at this month’s finale – he’s done more than any driver in this sport can reasonably be expected to do to boost his platform, in the hopes of it being enough to draw IndyCar back to his home country. In return, he sees a series that has talked about the prospect of such an event since 2015, but doesn’t appear to have made it a priority. And when made the offer to co-opt on a venture the response was looking elsewhere for representatives in the market at a time when there was already buzz that NASCAR was closing in on its own deal. As O’Ward characterized to reporters Saturday in a follow-up interview, “It’s been three years that I’ve continuously pushed for this. I’ve made efforts to make sure it could be a success, including giving access to people to make watching races accessible and easy and free, and all my efforts have been shut down.
“I know I’ve done a lot for the series to try and make it bigger and bigger, and so before they’d consider reaching out to somebody else, I’m quite disappointed they didn’t come to me and I’ve been trying all these years and been willing to put my own money on the line to make this happen.”
O’Ward: ‘I deserve a piece of the pie’
According to the Associated Press, this weekend’s turmoil inside the IndyCar paddock at The Mile may have been exactly what a future Mexico City race needed to get off the ground. In the wake of O’Ward’s dramatic runner-up finish in this year’s Indy 500 – where Ocesa told AP that O’Ward’s popularity really caught fire – and then this weekend’s heightened attention around the possibility of a future IndyCar visit, there seem to be renewed vigor and conversations that could lead to a race as soon as 2026.
Why it took such fiery discourse to push that prospect along is another question entirely. Should talks progress, IndyCar and Penske Entertainment must hope it can repair its relationship with O’Ward, who may still harbor frustration that it took speaking out, Miles responding and the multi-day storylines that sprung from it all to get the balls rolling, rather than his genuine stardom and a sport willing to move mountains to invest in it and take advantage of it.
Rightly or wrongly, in O’Ward’s eyes, IndyCar should’ve been there this year and beaten NASCAR to the punch – whatever it would’ve taken. If it ever happens, and if he’s relied upon as a massive promotional piece to drive interest, the 25-year-old Arrow McLaren driver has boldly stated he deserves a cut of the revenue.
“I definitely think I should be part of the pie, because that race is nothing without me,” he said. “I’ve put a lot of my own money into promoting and growing IndyCar with my fans in Mexico, so I deserve a piece of the pie. I’ll also make sure that it’s more of a success than if I’m not part of it.
“You can tell (a Mexico City race) hasn’t been a priority for them, until now, because they realize, ‘Well, who sells?’ Not to toot my own horn, but that’s what (my fandom) has created in the last few years. And I’m just trying to do my part to help the series and help grow my brand.”
For now, IndyCar is again left playing catchup, a theme that’s been all too common in recent years from an ownership group that fans and paddock members alike, perhaps unfairly, expected almost immediate wholesale changes from.
“I think the way they do things is not with urgency,” O’Ward continued. “At some point, I get it. If you’re impatient, you could end up being too antsy in getting to where you want to go. But the series has moved way too slowly.
“I respect them, and I know they’ve got other things (they’re working on) … but (IndyCar) is healthy. There’s a lot of people who want to join. Everybody’s saving a bunch of money cause we’re racing with a car that’s more than a decade old. You’d at least want to see we’re getting somewhere.”
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Publish date : 2024-09-04 21:40:00
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