How Penske pulled off the blockbuster IndyCar purchase

In the modern sense of the word, Roger Penske has 'owned' the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for quite some time. His team's 18 Indianapolis 500 wins are one obvious illustration of that, since nearest rival car owners Michael Andretti and Lou Moore are on five apiece (won between 2005 and '17, and '38 and '49 respectively), and Chip Ganassi is on four ('00-12).

No less significant is how rarely Penske cars are off the pace at Indy: sure, the occasional bad pitstop or driver misjudgment will harm the result, but in terms of pace, 'The Captain's' armada is a perennial contender.

That's no surprise. It's an open secret within Penske that the boss puts higher stock in conquering the Brickyard than winning the IndyCar championship, so much of the squad's off-season car development goes into superspeedway improvements. And that will remain the case even now that Pocono Raceway's deletion from the IndyCar calendar leaves IMS as the series' only oval over 1.5 miles in length.

Therefore, given the depth and quality of human and financial resources at the team's disposal, it's to be expected that Penske cars are prominent in the month of May.

But those same human and financial resources ensure Penske is strong all season long, too, which is why the squad has just scored its 16th Indycar championship in 48 years of running full-time. In that regard, Chip Ganassi Racing is much closer - indeed Chip's hit rate is superior having earned 12 drivers' titles in 30 years.

But you get the point: Penske is synonymous with open-wheel glory stateside and now, literally as well as figuratively, he truly does own both Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the IndyCar Series, as revealed this past Monday.

At 82-going-on-60, Penske has made a move that ensures not only that his beloved amphitheatre remains the domain of true racers, but that its primary event will continue to be the Indy 500.

Was this opportunity for Penske to pledge his devotion to Indycar racing in such a comprehensive manner something that was always destined to happen one day? Definitely not.

Without wishing to be indelicate, it must be pointed out that RP was just two years younger than the track's long-time steward, the late Mari Hulman George - daughter of the wise, determined and ambitious Tony Hulman Jr, whose Hulman and Company brand bought the Speedway in 1945, but who died in '77.

The process of figuring out a deal with Roger Penske and his assessors and advisors completing their due diligence was remarkably swift - just six weeks

Ever since becoming chairperson of IMS and also Hulman and Company in 1988, Mari had seemed immovable on the matter of the track's future: it would remain in the family forever.

When she died in November 2018, the chance for change sprouted forth. Without Mari's presence, maybe her children - Tony George Jr and sisters Nancy, Josie and Kathi - would be more open to the idea of relinquishing their grasp on the "Racing Capital of the World".

And there seemed solid evidence of a collective shift in attitudes last May, when Hulman and Company sold its Clabber Girl baking soda brand for $80m - although some sources poured cold water on that notion by suggesting that in fact the family had been against that sale, and that it had been a decision made by Hulman and Company board members.

Still, the Speedway-for-sale rumours did not entirely dissipate. Put simply, while it was not officially 'on the market', the people who could afford to consider such an investment knew it was available. Thus there was much speculation that it would one day soon(ish) pass to the highest bidder.

But, the family members deserved more faith than that. For one thing, there's no suggestion they urgently need the money, so they could afford to take their time and be choosey over potential purchasers. They care deeply for the family legacy and, in some cases, adore IndyCar and IMS as much as you or I - so they wouldn't be selling necessarily to the highest bidder, but instead the right one.

Holding this belief in the Hulman-George family's sentiments was reassuring. It meant that a non-racing entity, however large the dollar amount proffered, would not be allowed to barge in, carelessly and/or callously wreak havoc with the place's heritage and then flip it for profit to some like-minded goons.

As for the idea that International Speedway Corporation or NASCAR/Speedway Motorsports Inc might grab IMS, that seemed unlikely when examined from either side of the catchfencing, primarily due to the fact that the IndyCar Series came with the Speedway as a package deal.

Acquiring IMS and IndyCar has not been just a chest-puffing prestige deal for Penske, nor one in which he will be a dull caretaker owner, content with stasis

From an outsider's point of view, while American open-wheel racing is slowly becoming more popular, it can't show off eye-catching profits that would lure in a company used to seeing NASCAR-style numbers. Then, seen from the family's perspective, while the track's 110-year heritage would ensure it remained far more prestigious than other tracks in the portfolio of a company such as ISC, would a company with a stock car culture always have open-wheel racing's best interests at heart beyond the confines of the Brickyard? It seems unlikely. Indeed, it's not difficult to imagine IndyCar eventually being separated from its heartland track and being sold on.

Such doubts would have raised a huge red flag for the Hulman-Georges who, let's emphasise again, want the best for Indycar racing. Therefore, it seems there was only one way to turn - and as Tony George described it, the process of figuring out a deal with Roger Penske, and RP's assessors and advisors completing their due diligence, was remarkably swift - just six weeks, in fact. It began at this year's IndyCar finale at Laguna Seca, a couple of hours before Josef Newgarden earned Team Penske its latest IndyCar title.

"Our process took us to a point where we as a family all agreed we needed to have a conversation with Roger Penske," said Tony George. "I approached him at the final race of the season, not wanting to distract from the task at hand, which was bringing home another championship, but I wanted to wish him well on the grid, and I just simply said I'd like to meet with him and talk about stewardship.

"He got a very serious look on his face and followed up, after he clinched his championship, with an email and then another email the next morning, and we set it up. I invited Mark [Miles, CEO and president of Hulman and Company] to join us for that meeting, and kudos to both organisations who worked very closely together very quickly.

"It was pretty easy - not easy by any means, but this isn't their first rodeo. So they were able to execute around diligence very quickly, and it led to an announcement that miraculously [stayed secret]. Not many things are kept under wraps around here, but this was fairly well contained...

"That's kind of the way it came about, and we're just very thankful for the opportunity to be here today and to work towards this closing."

George, whose voice cracked a couple of times, admitted the announcement was "bittersweet" and later expanded on the theme of handing over to the right person at the right time, which proves the point about how much IndyCar and the Speedway means to the outgoing owners.

And so say all of us. In a sport where nothing is ever certain until it's fact, few will have dared to dream that Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IndyCar would pass into the hands of Roger Penske. He truly is the ideal keeper of the keys to these two kingdoms: The Captain was indoctrinated in the sport at a young age, and he swiftly acquired acute business skills and understanding and combined them with a steel core of ambition that never seems to lose its lustre.

The direction that ambition now takes him in is starting to be decided already, but the one thing we know is that acquiring IMS and IndyCar has not been just a chest-puffing prestige deal for Penske, nor one in which he will be a dull caretaker owner, content with stasis.

Asked directly about the much-vaunted idea of an IndyCar/NASCAR double-header, he replied: "Well, I think it was interesting to see Newgarden run [an IndyCar] around what they call the Roval down in Charlotte several weeks ago, and I think it was pretty exciting. I think some of the fans had never seen an Indycar on an oval or a racetrack.

"Tony [George] will give us some of his input and certainly Mark and the team, too. Are those things we can do? Can we execute those so we bring value here to the Speedway?

"Look, we've got to break some glass on some of these things, don't we? We've got to try some of this. I'm prepared to take a risk - no risk, no reward in many cases. Those are the things that Mark, with you and your team, we'll take a look at.

"I think we have to look at investments in lights or something else we can do here to make the Speedway and IRL [IndyCar] a going entity that gives us the results that we expect.

"What I intend to do is walk the entire facility and strategically sit down with the existing team and get their top 10 [priorities] - I always like to work from a top 10 - and see things that we can do to make it fan-friendly [and] serve [the series] from a competitive perspective."

Penske has to send the marketing of the full IndyCar season into orbit, and as soon as possible

He later added: "We look at the Speedway itself, the investment with the $100m that was put in a few years ago before the 100th [running of the Indy 500 in 2016], I think you've seen a tremendous change, and we want to add capability. What can we use this for? Can we run a 24-hour race here? Can we run a Formula 1 race here? What are the things we can do? This is a great asset."

Now, just to be clear here, however giddy he might have felt at clinching perhaps the favourite deal of his lifetime, Penske is not a man who does his thinking out loud: he didn't become a billionaire without playing his cards close to his chest in the business context. For him to be so open about the ideas he's considering, we can be sure that changes are on the way.

In the fullness of time, Roger Penske's influence on the IndyCar Series as a whole may be regarded as even more significant.

Some 41 years ago, the late lamented Dan Gurney wrote his famous White Paper that heralded the arrival of CART - Championship Auto Racing Teams - which comprised a consortium of like-minded Indycar team owners who would wrest control of topline US open-wheel racing away from the United States Automobile Club.

One of Gurney's primary motivations in his uprising was that he felt the Indycar season consisted of the Indianapolis 500 and a bunch of barely visible 'other races', for which purses were feeble and media coverage was negligible.

More than four decades on, parallels can still be drawn. While the Grand Prix of Long Beach is special, St Petersburg is doing well, Barber Motorsports Park and Mid-Ohio have a consistent following, and the races at Gateway and Portland International Raceway have been recent welcome returnees to the IndyCar schedule, there is still much work to be done.

Somehow, Penske has to send the marketing of the full IndyCar season into orbit, and as soon as possible, but that should be feasible given his character, charisma, prestige and reach.

"Roger is the perfect steward to take the sport forward," Miles told Autosport. "He's got all the history, all the perspective - not just of open-wheel and IMS but all aspects of motorsport all these decades. He's a true racer, he can talk engines, he knows everything there is to know about owning and running successful racecars and getting the best from his drivers. But he's also an incredibly successful businessman who knows how to execute.

"We know of no one better suited to take charge."

Roger Penske now has much to live up to. He's already played down the chances of any conflict of interest, and has the backing of Andretti and Ganassi, his two major rivals. It's hard to believe there's anyone out there better equipped to fulfil such promise.