Latest Evidence from Mexico City Lags Behind NASCAR and F1
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Latest Evidence from Mexico City Lags Behind NASCAR and F1

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Latest Evidence from Mexico City Lags Behind NASCAR and F1

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  • IndyCar raises questions about its ability to seriously compete with NASCAR and F1 again
  • Pato O’Ward: “I’m very disappointed they didn’t come to me”

Despite all the negative backlash that Penske Entertainment and its chairman and CEO Mark Miles have faced since NASCAR set the 2025 race date in Mexico City — including jokes about billboards, harsh public words from at least eight drivers, withering criticism from fans on social media and Pato O’Ward’s viral catchphrase during the race winner’s press conference (“Pato who?”) — the multi-day storyline boils down to one overarching fact:

IndyCar, even under the leadership of billionaire Roger Penske, is not a serious competitor to NASCAR and Formula 1 for global popularity.

IndyCar’s competitors are willing and able to innovate, take risks and spend money at levels that Penske Entertainment simply cannot or will not afford.

That’s not necessarily a criticism or a mistake. But it’s reality, and that’s why we’re where we are, as NASCAR begins a multi-year deal in Mexico City next summer, while Miles acknowledges that IndyCar — before and during Penske’s ownership — could have rented the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and promoted the race itself. But even if the series were to get a one-year deal with the track promoter (CIE and its Ocesa subsidiary), Miles told IndyStar on Sunday that Penske Entertainment wouldn’t sign a future appointment without a multi-year guarantee from a promoter willing to pay him a traditional sanctioning fee and then serve as a vehicle to take the lead in building the foundation for a successful race.

“Before Roger became the owner, I was there with the Ocesa guys, without the 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 find a promoter,” Miles told the IndyStar on Sunday, two days after adding that even in 2021, during O’Ward’s serious title hunt, the track and its 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 the event up and running and operationally and promotionally.

“You don’t do that for a year. Our approach to running events is different – especially in a championship. With a championship, we want stability in the markets. It’s a missed opportunity if you do that, and it reflects badly on the series.”

“I think this is a huge mistake”: IndyCar Drivers Question NASCAR Landing Mexico City Race

A closer look at the recent evolution of the IndyCar, NASCAR and F1 race schedules

It’s that methodical approach of trudging along and waiting for suitors to accept it while its closest competitors in the North American motorsports space (Formula 1 and NASCAR) have made seismic leaps with new events in recent years that has left IndyCar’s critics in the paddock frustrated. Here’s what the three series have done since the start of 2021 in North America:

>>Indy Car: He reinstated the one-year suspension of racing at Iowa Speedway with a dual event featuring popular bands; transformed the test track at The Thermal Club into a much-hyped exhibition and now a regular-season event that seats only a few thousand fans; moved the racing to the streets around Titans Stadium in Nashville, but then fell through with plans to race on Broadway and eventually ended up at Nashville Superspeedway, where it hasn’t raced in 16 years; and revived the history of racing at The Milwaukee Mile, which was a huge success in its first year.

>>NASCAR: 2021 saw the addition of Nashville Superspeedway, COTA, and Road America, while experimenting with a dirt track in Bristol and the IMS road course; 2022 saw the relocation of The Clash to the LA Coliseum and the addition of Gateway; 2023 saw the launch of street racing in Chicago while moving the All-Star Race to North Wilkesboro; 2024 saw the first visit to Iowa Speedway; and 2025 saw a visit to Mexico City and the relocation of The Clash to Bowman Gray.

>>Formula 1: From one race in the US to three, prompting the construction of a purpose-built facility around the Miami Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium, as well as bringing one of the series’ signature events to the streets of Las Vegas; in 2024, the US is one of only two countries in the world to host more than one Formula 1 race, and the only one to host more than two.

More: O’Ward responds to claims he and IndyCar aren’t popular enough for Mexico City race

Again, without Roger Penske himself, who is a bankroller who spends far more money than he earns, IndyCar can’t compete with these two in the spending war. Although Penske Entertainment has increased spending both at IMS (to the tune of $60 million in upgrades and maintenance) and across the series, it has largely not been in a way that has led to the kind of eye-popping changes and dynamics that its competitors boast.

IndyCar’s passing on another major race in Mexico City to NASCAR is merely a symptom of these larger business decisions and realities. Unlike NASCAR, IndyCar can’t or won’t spend $50 million to start a new race (as the stock car series did in Year 1 of the 2023 Chicago race) without the certainty that there will be a Year 2

O’Ward: ‘All my efforts have been thwarted’

But there are arguments that if IndyCar really wanted to capitalize on its most popular driver, it could do so without an outside party. At one point, many in the paddock argued that if you wanted to see change, you had to spend money to make money and bet on yourself when others wouldn’t.

As Miles noted, renting a permanent track in Mexico City had long been on the cards, and O’Ward’s father says he approached Penske Corp. CEO Bud Denker in Thermal in March of this year about renting the track himself — after gaining experience in the market hiring track workers, security personnel, etc. through his own contacts — and then partnered with the series as a race promoter to get IndyCar to market as quickly as possible.

Initiate: Here’s How Palou and Power Can Win 2024 IndyCar Title in Nashville

According to O’Wards, that offer fell on deaf ears. Coupled with the rejection of the driver’s Pato TV app — a platform that allowed O’Ward’s 45,000 subscribers to watch live on-board video during races — because it conflicted with the series’ own app capabilities, recent NASCAR news, and the revelation that Penske Entertainment has nominated Mexican USF Pro 2000 driver Ricardo Escotto’s father and former IndyCar driver Michel Jourdain (who is also from Mexico) as its attorneys to seek a future contract in O’Wards’ place, there is undoubtedly growing frustration from IndyCar’s most popular driver toward the series’ leadership.

In O’Ward’s eyes — who launched his own product line and used it to create ticket and gift packages for his fans, first at Texas Motor Speedway and now for this month’s finale — he’s done more than you’d expect any driver in the sport to do to promote his platform, hoping it’ll be enough to lure IndyCar back to his home turf. Instead, he sees a franchise that’s been talking about the prospect of such an event since 2015 but hasn’t seemed to make it a priority. And when an offer was made to co-opt the venture, the response was to seek representation elsewhere in the market at a time when NASCAR was already rumored to be closing in on its own deal. As O’Ward characterized reporters Saturday in a follow-up interview: “I’ve been working on this nonstop for the past three years. I’ve been working hard to make sure it can be a success, including making sure people have access, making it accessible, easy and free to watch, and all of my efforts have been put on hold.

“I know I’ve done a lot for this series to grow it and make it more popular, so before they thought about approaching someone else, I was very disappointed that they didn’t approach me. I’ve been trying all these years and I was willing to risk my own money to make it happen.”

O’Ward: ‘I deserve a piece of the pie’

According to the Associated Press, the commotion this weekend in the IndyCar paddock at The Mile may have been exactly what a future race in Mexico City needed to get off the ground. After O’Ward’s dramatic second-place finish in this year’s Indy 500 — where Ocesa told the AP that O’Ward’s popularity has really taken off — and then the heightened attention this weekend about the possibility of a future IndyCar visit, there seems to be renewed vigor and talk that could lead to a race as early as 2026.

Why it took such a fiery discussion to push that prospect forward is another question entirely. If the talks move forward, IndyCar and Penske Entertainment must hope they can repair their relationship with O’Ward, who may still be frustrated that it took Miles’s statement, his response and the multi-day storylines that ensued to get things moving, rather than his true stardom and the sport’s willingness to move mountains to invest in and benefit from him.

Rightly or wrongly, in O’Ward’s eyes, IndyCar should be there this year and overtake NASCAR – whatever that takes. If that ever happens, and if it’s treated as a huge promotional item that will generate interest, the 25-year-old Arrow McLaren driver has boldly declared that he deserves a share of the revenue.

“I definitely think I should be part of the pie because this race is nothing without me,” he said. “I put a lot of my own money into promoting and growing IndyCar for my fans in Mexico, so I deserve a piece of the pie. I’ll also make sure it’s a bigger success than if I wasn’t a part of it.”

“You could tell (the Mexico City race) wasn’t a priority for them until now because they realize, ‘Well, who’s selling?’ I don’t want to brag, but that’s what (my fandom) has built over 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 once again playing catch-up, a common theme in recent years among owners who, perhaps unfairly, expected almost immediate, sweeping changes from both fans and members of the paddock.

“I think they don’t do it with any urgency,” O’Ward continued. “At some point, I understand that. If you’re impatient, you can end up being too nervous, not being able to get where you want to go. But the series was moving too slowly.

“I respect them and I know they have other things (they’re working on) … but (IndyCar) is healthy. There are a lot of people who want to join. Everyone is saving a lot of money because we’re racing a car that’s over a decade old. At least you’d like to see us go somewhere.”

Website https://www.oneroofptbo.ca

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