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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.
WEST ALLIS, Wisc. – Pato O’Ward isn’t mad. He’s disappointed.
To the 25-year-old Mexican driver, far-and-away IndyCar’s most popular driver, this week’s news of NASCAR taking the Cup and Xfinity series to Mexico City at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – the location of Formula 1’s Mexican Grand Prix – starting in 2025, is a reflection of Penske Entertainment’s inability to take advantage of the golden opportunity that is his ever-growing fandom in his native country.
And the Arrow McLaren driver is worried IndyCar may have missed its window.
“(NASCAR) beat us to the cake. I strongly believe that we’re not only late, but I strongly believe there isn’t any more room in Mexico City,” O’Ward told IndyStar, the Associated Press and NBC Sports on Friday at The Milwaukee Mile. “You need to understand that these people save up their money to go to these events.
“Now, if it’s a Mexico City IndyCar race, it would have to be along with either Formula 1 or NASCAR. I don’t think there’s (a way to land) an individual IndyCar weekend there (anymore). To have success for an IndyCar race in Mexico, you probably can’t have it in Mexico City. It would probably have to be in Monterrey. It’s a different venue, different demographic, and they’d have to put a lot of money into (Parque Fundidora, where CART raced decades ago).”
For years, O’Ward and others have asked Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles, series owner Roger Penske and other IndyCar decisionmakers about the prospect of adding a race somewhere in Mexico, as the series has made a stated priority of venturing into bigger North American markets to both boost its popularity and its exposure to a younger demographic.
But O’Ward’s jaded to the idea that any serious progress was being made, all while being told about how Penske Entertainment officials were “having talks” again and again.
“I’m not shocked that this is what it’s come to, to be honest,” he said. “I’m obviously not fully aware of everything that goes on, but just as an outsider looking in, obviously there wasn’t enough pressure from the series in order to get it done.
“I think the way (Penske Entertainment) does things isn’t with urgency. And at some point, I get it. If you’re too impatient, you could end up being too antsy, but the series has moved too slowly, and that’s the reality. I respect them, and I know they’ve got other things, and when COVID-19 came, it was a tough year for a lot of people. But the series is healthy, and there’s a lot of people who want to join. Everybody’s saving a bunch of money because we’re racing with a car that’s more than a decade old. You’d at least want to see that we’re getting somewhere.”
In the half-dozen drivers select media asked Friday to weigh in on O’Ward’s frustrations, there was near-unity in the thought that IndyCar had missed a major opportunity in not beating NASCAR to the punch.
“I think that’s a massive miss,” IndyCar veteran Scott Dixon said Friday. “I don’t know how that happens.”
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Promoters have said IndyCar not well enough known in Mexico City
Miles confirmed to reporters Friday afternoon in the wake of O’Ward’s public frustrations that talks with his home country regarding the potential of a future race are ongoing. But there is a concrete reason, he said, why IndyCar couldn’t manage to make any significant inroads in 2021 when O’Ward said he feels his popularity took off after his first IndyCar victory.
It was the same message, Miles said, the series was met with during discussions early-on in his tenure atop the sport ahead of Penske’s purchase.
“I’ll be frank, they said, ‘If you want us to rent you the place, we’ll rent it to you, but we don’t want to partner’,” Miles said. “‘We think it’s too early. You’re not well enough known yet to be in Mexico City.’ It means they have a view that we’re not well enough known – and nor is Pato yet – to populate an event at the track. I know how many seats they can take out, and they can do a lot of things, but they think we don’t have the market penetration yet.
“There hasn’t been a year where we haven’t had contact to test the waters in Mexico, and it was that we weren’t ready – at least not in Mexico City. There were conversations about resort places for temporary street circuits and the like, but we just didn’t feel that would have enough staying power.”
Still, conversations and attempts to move the needle for potential events in Mexico City, Monterrey (O’Ward’s hometown) and elsewhere continue, Miles said. Penske Entertainment has made Ricardo Escotto, the father of the Mexican Indy NXT driver of the same name, the series’ proxy for future negotiations to try and land a race in the country, adding that the elder Escotto “has a letter from me saying he’s authorized to get us a a race in Mexico City.” IndyCar’s talks centered around the prospect of racing at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez have taken place with Corporacion Interamericana de Entretenimiento (CIE), the same group that has landed both the NASCAR and F1 races at the same venue.
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Escotto, Miles said, owns a sizable, popular, successful billboard business in Mexico. “We checked him out thoroughly. He has a lot of money, but he’s also got a very successful business and a real interest in doing it,” Miles said. “He’s very aggressive. He’s terrific and a very credible guy. I’ve had four meetings with him, and I get reports from him.”
Miles wouldn’t dispute O’Ward’s sentiment that IndyCar missed the boat on landing a race at the permanent circuit in Mexico City, but the Penske Entertainment president and CEO also wouldn’t rule out the idea of IndyCar potentially finding a way to partner on a weekend with NASCAR down the road. Miles was quick to point to the fact that NASCAR has sanctioned a full-on series in the country since 2004, giving it a massive in roads in the country that, along with his sizable advantage in capital and breadth of the business at-large, helped the stock car series get the wheels turning much quicker than America’s premier open-wheel racing series that only now may be starting to be recognized as a reasonable future partner at the track.
“I will say that it’s clear that Pato isn’t as famous as the last previously famous Mexican driver – Adrian Fernandez – but he’s really gaining ground, and he’s actually on some billboards now,” Miles said. “He’ll probably complain that I haven’t dragged him in, and that he should be the guy to go in and make the deal.
“I do think Pato is a natural star, and I do think this is going to happen, but in 2021, I’m quite certain they didn’t think it was time. But there have been a lot of conversations this time around. It hasn’t been a drive-by thing.”
O’Ward: ‘IndyCar needs to look at the bigger picture’
To O’Ward, that just doesn’t stand as an aggressive enough approach for a series that even during Penske’s ownership has annually been taking steps both forward and back and still is waiting for supercharged boost in popularity and revenue. He points to his 2021 down-to-the-wire championship battle with Spanish-speaking Alex Palou as a time when Penske Entertainment should’ve been moving heaven and earth to make in-roads and land an event, one way or another.
“Okay, maybe you can’t get (a race) for 2022, but if should have been a very hard push for it to be done in 2023 – at the latest, 2024,” O’Ward said Friday. “If I had all the money in the world, it would have already been part of the calendar, but I don’t have the capital to risk $5 million, $6 million, $7 million to put up a race.
“And I definitely think I should be part of the pie, because that race is nothing without me. I’ve put in a lot of my own money to promote IndyCar and grow IndyCar with my fans in Mexico, to where I deserve a piece of the pie. And I’ll also help make sure that it’s more of a success than if I’m not part of it.”
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Now, with F1 well in-trenched and NASCAR a less than a year from bringing its most-popular series to the country for Cup’s first points-paying race outside the U.S. since the 1950s, O’Ward sees a pie of racing popularity that IndyCar could’ve once had a 30%-40% cut of trimmed to maybe 10%, or 20% at best.
“I don’t think we’re in a position as a series to be choosey. I think it’s important to keep up the level of certain things. There should be an expectation from promoters,” O’Ward said. “I get it’s ‘this’ amount of money to take IndyCar there, but I think the series needs to look at the bigger picture.
“Someone that’s a big promoter could do it. It’s like me coming to you, and me selling you something and having my feet dipped into it as well. I’m giving you a deal because I believe in this as well. They’ve got skin in the game. And compare that to a situation where I’m like, ‘You’re not getting any deal. This is the price.’ They way that’s going to be received is very different. (Roger) Penske does a bunch of business-to-business deals. Everything he does is ‘B2B’. And to me, it’s just, I’d say it’s a shock that he and his whole team haven’t looked at the bigger picture of what this would do for their whole series. I respect him a lot, but he’s got (money) in his pockets. Mine are empty.”
O’Ward said he wouldn’t classify himself as being ‘angry.’ He only wishes that decision-makers’ minds continue to evolve on the topic – and that this might be an instance that supercharges change.
“I’m not going to waste my time being angry. I have no pull for that,” he said. “All I have is a desire to show them that someone’s holding a gold plate in front of you, and you’re like, ‘No, let me have the bronze one.’
“I don’t get it. I know we’re an American series, but no one cares that we’re an American series. More people will care if we go international and get in front of more people.”
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Publish date : 2024-08-30 14:06:00
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