IndyCar, Fox, Penske, Should Pay for Alex Palou’s Rumored Red Bull Formula 1 Seat
I usually stick to commenting on confirmed news stories rather than rumors, but I’ll make an exception for the reports coming out of the motorsport world today, August 25th 2025.
The story itself is exceptional, but what I find more compelling is that it sits right at the heart of a dynamic that I’ve written about often: the lackluster performance of IndyCar relative to the juggernaut that F1 has become.
Red Bull Racing’s reported interest in Alex Palou, IndyCar’s four-time champion could be seen as zero-sum, a potential loss of IndyCar’s brightest star via defection to Formula 1, thus weakening the former even further in favor of the latter.
The contract situation is messy: Palou is locked into Chip Ganassi Racing through 2026 (though there is an “out” clause), McLaren’s lawsuit over a broken deal is still in play, and generally the financial hurdles to release him would be significant.
But let’s step back and think big, on a scale as big and crazy as the possibility of Max Verstappen and Alex Palou would be.
Instead of resisting the move, IndyCar should embrace it.
And fund it.
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In less than 500 words.
If Penske and Fox, with their resources and ownership stakes, backed Palou into a Red Bull seat, the series would gain a global ambassador in the one place where motorsport attention is guaranteed.
In a way, IndyCar would be a sponsor of F1 and Red Bull, leveraging the platform as so many other sponsors do, at a huge cost for a potentially huge gain.
Make no mistake, the price tag would be steep, a buyout from Ganassi, a settlement with McLaren, and cash to sweeten (perhaps even solidify) Red Bull’s interest and fund the seat perhaps several times over.
But the potential return, in new fans, in interest, in merchandise sales, would dwarf the cost.
The idea is crazy, but the theory is sound
IndyCar has a visibility problem: Palou has won four championships in five seasons and the Indy 500, yet outside North America he’s virtually anonymous. Putting him in F1 changes that overnight. Every broadcast, every graphic, every mention of Palou would carry IndyCar along with it.
The perfect profile: Palou is European, multilingual, and credible at the elite level. He’s exactly the type of driver IndyCar needs to connect with global fans, someone who can represent the series without feeling like a transplant.
Marketing leverage: No traditional campaign could match the exposure of having IndyCar’s champion lining up next to Max Verstappen. It’s a built-in storyline: “IndyCar’s best versus F1’s best.” Alternatively, in this situation unlike any other, the pairing would be unlike any other. It wouldn’t really be one versus the other, it would be Max Verstappen and Alex Palou, the Avengers of motorsport, the two best of the best, together, taking on the world’s other 18 top drivers. Red Bull gets the unbeatable pairing. IndyCar gets its ambassador. And together, they’d create a storyline bigger than anything either series could script alone. Fox and Penske would effectively be buying a marketing channel with guaranteed global reach and a storyline for the ages.
Everyone gets paid: Ganassi would receive a buyout. McLaren could be made whole through a settlement. Red Bull would secure a proven champion with sponsorship support behind him. And IndyCar would trade a driver it can’t monetize properly for an ambassador it can. The expenditures would be large, the upside could be far larger.
This isn’t unprecedented. Other sports have invested in talent placements as growth strategies. The NBA built its global profile not just on teams, but on promoting its stars internationally.
IndyCar has to think the same way.
Instead of perhaps trying to keep Palou, the series should let him go, at a time when his star has never been brighter, but do it on their terms, as an investment in reach and relevance, making it a “win”, in theory, for everyone involved.
It may sound radical, but the high-level logic works: spend tens of millions to back Palou’s Red Bull seat, reap hundreds of millions in long-term exposure, sponsorship alignment, and international credibility.
Palou himself has said he values winning over fame. That’s fine for him, but IndyCar needs fame, not empty hype; it needs the visibility to attract sponsors, grow audiences, and keep manufacturers engaged.
Palou in F1 does that better than any ad campaign or broadcast deal ever could and who knows?
Maybe he gets into the seat and crushes the opportunity.
The question isn’t whether IndyCar can afford to let Palou go.
It’s whether it can afford not to turn him into the ambassador who finally bridges its world with Formula 1’s and takes the stagnating US series to new heights.
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Main image credit: Wikipedia