Chip Ganassi defends Roger Penske's IndyCar leadership: 'Don't forget about COVID so quickly'

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Though his fiercest rival in IndyCar for nearly three decades, Chip Ganassi wouldn't take a public swipe at Roger Penske while one of his peers was calling The Captain’s viability as IndyCar’s owner into question.

That’s not to say, though, that Ganassi is satisfied with the state of the sport.

“Anybody that can run the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with no fans in the stands? He’s got my vote,” Ganassi told a small group of reporters Friday, when asked whether his expectations of Penske’s IndyCar ownership had been met after more than four years. “He coughed up the money to buy the place, and he coughed it up during COVID and kept the series running.

“I’m going to give him a pass for a couple years, yeah? Let him get back on his feet. I’m not going to sharp-shoot him. I don’t want to forget about COVID so quickly and all the effects that had.”

Ganassi’s comments came in the wake of Michael Andretti venting hours before the season’s opening practice on the streets of St. Petersburg that, in the early days of discussions about a future charter system, Penske Entertainment leadership dared to ask IndyCar team owners to pay for a spot.

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The reasoning, as Andretti explained to reporters, was to take that $20 million and invest it in the sport’s growth. Though not the only one to say so privately, Andretti saw the proposal as insulting.

“First of all, $20 million isn’t going to do anything. You’ve got to have five times that number – at least. And don’t take our money, Roger. You bought the series. We don’t own the series,” Andretti said.

If Penske isn’t willing to put up eight or nine figures, Andretti reasoned, “Then sell the series. 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.”

The quote came just over a week after Penske Entertainment Corp, president and CEO Mark Miles spent more than an hour answering any question the series’ core media threw at him over Zoom, spending the first 25 minutes on a soliloquy that detailed what IndyCar leadership sees as it’s major metric successes of 2023 and laid out chunks of its roadmap for the near-future.

When told of the discontent in the sport brewing among owners and drivers regarding an alleged lack of willingness to ‘spend money to make money,’ Miles told reporters that IndyCar “suffers” up against comparisons to NASCAR and Formula 1, series whose operating budgets dwarf that of IndyCar.

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“Roger will tell you he’s serious, and we’re looking at ways we can increase our growth more dramatically, but we’re not going to make the same investments that might be made if we had $1 billion a year in TV revenue,” Miles said.

Ganassi admitted Friday he was taken aback that a series that has been paying Leader Circle participants roughly $1 million per year for finishing in the top-22 in entrant points would suddenly ask those same teams to pay $1 million for the right to continue receiving those annual funds and sell it off if they wish.

“My attitude was, ‘I’ve been paying for this for 20-30 years. And I was in another series where I didn’t have to pay for it,” Ganassi said Friday. “It came across to me like this: I think they were responding to some people and came up with an idea that wasn’t fully baked. There were just too many unanswered questions.”

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As he explained, Ganassi falls somewhere between Andretti’s insistence that IndyCar needs $100 million to take on its racing rivals in the U.S, and Penske Entertainment’s insistence that its work – much of it out of sight – isn’t to be overlooked.

“If Michael was a billionaire, he’d see things a little differently,” Ganassi said. “But I’ve spent my own money from time to time, and it’s paid off for me in the long run. I haven’t seen (Penske) personal finance statements, but I’m sure he’s keeping some races propped up that we need.

“And if he’s not spending his money where Michael thinks he should be spending his money, that’s between those two. I’m not going to get into the middle of that.”

That’s not to say, though, that Ganassi doesn’t recognize the discontent simmering after an offseason that, at least to scores of fans and some members of the paddock, saw IndyCar take body blow after body blow related to losing Texas on the schedule, having its in-the-works video game canned, yet again delaying its hybrid system’s launch and having its grand plans for a downtown Nashville finale called untenable.

In a way, he says, he thinks it’s healthy – as a sign of passion about the sport succeeding. “I think it’s healthy for 10 owners to have 10 different things they want,” Ganassi said. “That means the series is doing good, because no one can pinpoint exactly what we need.

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“It’s pretty easy to sharp-shoot at someone when you’re not sitting at their desk every day. I’m sure you could come into my business and tell me some things I need, and I could come into yours and tell you what you need. It’s always good to come back to racing. It kinda stops all the (expletive).”

That scattered, fractured frustration, though, isn’t ideal when it comes to conversations around IndyCar’s plan to launch a charter system – something Miles says he wants to have the framework for by this year’s Indianapolis 500. While stopping short from calling for the formation of IndyCar’s version of NASCAR’s ‘Race Team Alliance’ – launched in 2014 by NASCAR team owners to negotiate with the governing body on issues like the charter system and the revenue split – Ganassi said he wouldn’t be against it either.

“I don’t know it needs that formality, but I think something along those lines would be good,” he said. “I think there’s room to keep everybody happy who want some sort of guarantee, which I can argue for if you’re committed to a full-season, or you’ve been here for 20 years, but I can also make the argument that the fastest cars should be in the (500).

“What are we trying to accomplish with a franchise system? Oh, by the way, every other major sport has one, and I wonder why? So, what’s the point of a franchise system? Start with that, and if you can all agree on that, then you can agree on how to go forward.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Chip Ganassi defends Roger Penske amidst Michael Andretti's discontent