This article is the first in a series looking at the state of several major motorsport organizations.

The dual stories of every motorsport season

Every motorsport season tells two stories.

There’s the one played out on the track: the wins, losses, and moments fans will remember for years.

And then there’s the one that unfolds behind the scenes, where commercial deals, political maneuvering, and long-term strategy shape the sport’s future.

The very fact that this article can be written in mid-August, with two races still left to run, is itself part of IndyCar’s problem: the season comes and goes in a flash, followed by a six-month void that leaves little space for new stories to develop or late-comers to find their way in.

That’s only the tip of the iceberg, but nevertheless the 2025 IndyCar season delivered plenty of on-track action, in keeping with what it’s known for as the place where open-wheel finesse mixes with just a hint of NASCAR chaos.

But the off-track story is where the series’s long-term fate will be decided, and 2025 has become a pivotal year in this narrative, with events both expected and shocking coalescing into a stack of strategic headaches for this historic racing brand.

Questions about governance, investment, technology, and market positioning have all come to the surface explicitly and much more subtly, creating both opportunity and risk for the teams that compete in IndyCar.

As the season already winds down, IndyCar finds itself at a crossroads unlike any other in its history, where the next moves will decide how much it can launch itself out of the stagnation it has experienced for years.

To an extent, that stagnation is paradoxically evident in Alex Palou, one of motorsport’s shining stars.

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In less than 500 words.

The Palou paradox

The IndyCar season still has two races left but fans can only hope for some interesting podium outcomes because the major sporting narrative arc is over: Alex Palou wrapped up his run for his third consecutive (and fourth total) IndyCar championship at the Portland International Raceway, cementing his name as one of IndyCar’s all-time greats.

That brilliance is an appropriate depiction of the state of IndyCar because Alex Palou encapsulates perfectly the most problematic issue with the series: if you watch IndyCar, of course you know him, but if not, it’s “Alex who?”.

He’s one of the greatest athletes of all time in a sport that is woven into the culture of the world’s largest economy, and yet he may as well be anonymous outside of IndyCar.

The promise and perils of Fox Sports

The broadcast deal with Fox Sports was supposed to be a turning point in helping champions like Palou gain more recognition. After years with NBC Sports, the shift promised bigger reach, more consistent promotion, and the chance to inject new energy into IndyCar. Early-season buzz suggested that maybe, finally, IndyCar had found a partner ready to take the product seriously.

Now two thirds into 2025, aside from some amusing spots (one of which did feature Palou) which even aired during the Super Bowl, is IndyCar really at a point where we can say it’s any less of an “insider’s sport?”

I don’t think so, because I’m writing this at a time when F1 has just become the highest-grossing sports movie ever.

There is nothing - nothing - that IndyCar can offer right now that even comes close to that level of relevance.

Bottom line: the promise has so far outstripped the delivery. Also, while it’s unreasonable to expect miracles, it is concerning that IndyCar’s most glaring structural weakness — its aging fanbase — has not been addressed at all by either party.

Assuming growth does begin to pick up, a harder question looms: how far can IndyCar realistically climb, given its limits as a North American series?

Even stating that is stretching geographical definitions because currently, Toronto seems to be “on-the-bubble” and a Mexican race still has not materialized.

So no, it is highly unlikely that IndyCar will achieve F1’s global heights and that’s fine, but what the series should not accept is a “ceiling” that is lower than it otherwise could be because it did not mitigate all the possible factors under its control.

Penske, politics and perception

One of those factors is optics, and IndyCar lately has seemingly caused a succession of “own goals”.

Back to the broadcasting deal with Fox that then turned into partial ownership. For many viewers and potential IndyCar fans, Fox doesn’t just mean sports, it means Fox News, with all the political baggage that comes with it.

That association may turn out not to matter in the long run, but you have to get to that long run first. In other words, if IndyCar wants to broaden its base now, especially among younger and more diverse demographics, the working hypothesis has to be that it cannot ignore how this affects perception.

The problem only intensified in August, when the Trump administration unveiled plans for the so-called “Speedway Slammer,” an immigration detention center branded with IndyCar imagery and the number of its only Mexican driver, Pato O’Ward. Penske Entertainment said it was unaware of the plan, but in an age where optics drive sponsor decisions, the damage is already done. For a series actively trying to attract younger and more diverse fans and sponsors that can cater to them, the risk of being dragged, however unintentionally, into partisan crossfire is a commercial liability IndyCar cannot afford.

Formula 1 is much farther along the mediatization curve, certainly, but one has a hard time imagining its leadership ever allowing one of its brightest drivers to be associated with a political firestorm that undermines the series’ neutrality. IndyCar lacks that insulation, and the danger is that it becomes defined not by its racing, but by cultural battles it has no ability to win.

So many fans will say “keep politics out of this, just let me enjoy myself”; F1 manages this well, IndyCar, in 2025, has not.

And now, with the announcement that Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy will be featured at the 2025 IndyCar season finale in Nashville, the pattern becomes even clearer. Portnoy is polarizing, brash, and very deliberately not sophisticated, the exact opposite of the kind of figure Formula 1 would ever consider embracing at one of its races.

Which raises the question: does IndyCar know exactly what it’s doing, quietly leaning into the same media-political ecosystem that connects Fox, Roger Penske, and Dave Portnoy? Or is the series simply stumbling into choices without considering how they might shape its reputation five, ten, or twenty years from now?

Either explanation is concerning: one suggests deliberate narrowing of the fan base to an already saturated cultural lane, the other suggests a lack of strategic vision altogether.

Like F1, IndyCar should be political behind the scenes but be as publicly neutral as possible so as to make the biggest “tent” possible for new and established fans alike.

Governance under pressure

Speaking of neutrality, that same governance question hangs over Roger Penske himself. Rightly revered as one of the greatest team owners in motorsport history, his dual role as series owner and competitor creates conflicts that no amount of personal prestige can erase.

The cheating scandal involving Team Penske during and after the 2025 (and 2024…) Indy 500 illustrated this perfectly and was a direct blow to credibility, the kind of episode that confirms the worst suspicions about what happens when one man sits on both sides of the table. For fans and sponsors alike, it raises an uncomfortable question: can IndyCar be trusted to police itself fairly?

Technical fragility in IndyCar

This question must be answered quickly if it hopes to attenuate, and capitalize on, some of the most important technical milestones and challenges in IndyCar history.

Apparently, IndyCar has agreed to implement an external oversight group, but moving from idea to execution is never a given, and it must succeed if it wants to keep one major manufacturer (out of just two!) happy.

Indeed, beyond politics and governance, the technical foundations of the series are fragile. IndyCar still relies on just two engine manufacturers, Honda and Chevrolet, with Honda repeatedly questioning the financial logic of its involvement, and apparently making its participation contingent on IndyCar removing the aforementioned conflicts of interest.

The possibility of withdrawal has hung over the paddock for years and even if this never actually comes to fruition, the fact such rumors are entertained is concerning. Losing one supplier would not only reduce competitive variety but also undermine the series’s credibility in the eyes of manufacturers, fans, and commercial partners.

The chassis situation is equally troubling. The DW12, first unveiled in 2010, was already long in the tooth before its scheduled replacement in 2027 was pushed back again, this time to 2028.

That will make it almost 20 years (two decades!) between each respective unveiling, a staggering figure in modern motorsport.

Stability has its benefits, absolutely, but it has downsides, notably the need to retrofit measures such as aeroscreens and hybrid systems on a platform that didn’t account for them during the design phase.

More tangibly, this long interval also means the next reset will come with a heavy price tag. IndyCar’s teams are facing that inevitability with far fewer resources than their F1 counterparts, in a motorsport cost environment already escalating across the board due to inflationary and regulatory pressures and tariffs which will hit the US hard.

When the change comes, some outfits may simply not survive it (some teams are already on the bubble, with Juncos Hollinger Racing publicly announcing not long ago that it was searching for an equity partner to distribute more evenly the costs associated with keeping an IndyCar team on the grid).

IndyCar’s identity crisis

These are all crucial issues to resolve to get IndyCar on a solid foundation, but just like in construction, your foundation is a start point that depends entirely on where you want to end up; you have to work backwards.

Amidst all the talk of new races, demographics and cost escalations, there is a larger identity crisis that IndyCar has yet to resolve.

In the United States, consumer spending is heavily concentrated, with ten percent of people accounting for nearly half of discretionary spend, and the rich are only getting richer.

Formula 1 has made its choice very much consistently with that reality: it is chasing glamour, wealth, and exclusivity, packaging itself as a premium entertainment product.

That is not IndyCar in its current form, even if it claims otherwise.

Its circuits lack the polish to deliver a truly premium experience, and its marketing is nowhere near F1’s.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this; after all, the spirit of IndyCar is very much a blue-collar, “just get it done” ethos, and many of its most storied champions reflect that.

Each path for IndyCar, whether it be upmarket or mass market, is viable in theory, but each demands a distinct strategy.

IndyCar’s greatest weakness is that in 2025, it hasn’t committed to either.

How high (or low…) is IndyCar’s ceiling?

And that is why the question of the ceiling - how far can IndyCar climb - matters so much.

As a North American series, IndyCar will always face limits abroad. But even at home, it has to acknowledge the likelihood of a ceiling in audience and commercial growth. Defining that ceiling, and then executing with absolute clarity to maximize it, is the only way forward.

Without it, IndyCar risks drifting further into stagnation, a series with brilliant champions and thrilling races that never reach beyond an insiders’ circle.

That would be a shame, and for 2026 it would be great if someone could give Alex Palou a real run for his money, but regardless of whether he wins another championship or not, I certainly would like to see him pick up some more Instagram followers.

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Main image credit: Wikipedia

The Vaucher Analytics State of Motorsport 2025: IndyCar