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Insider: With Roger Penske at the helm of IndyCar, team owners 'going to sleep better at night'

Nathan Brown
Indianapolis Star

INDIANAPOLIS – Imagine if Cowboys' owner Jerry Jones replaced Roger Goodell as the NFL commissioner, or if the Lakers' Jeanie Buss ousted Adam Silver in the NBA – all while maintaining even the slightest connection to their billion-dollar franchises.

Can you hear the blistering outrage from wall-to-wall talk-show hosts, yelping louder and louder so their displeasure is heard best?

But there’s a reason any unrest over Roger Penske’s coronation as the new owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, IndyCar series and IMS Productions has reached only a low murmur on Twitter. In a sport where money is quite literally on the line each weekend and teams enter on different financial benchmarks, the most successful, most lauded, most driven team owner inside the IndyCar paddock also the man his fiercest competitors trust the most to protect their interests.

Yes, Penske is driven by the sheer competition of it all, but the 82-year-old billionaire continues to wake up each morning energized by the survival and success of open-wheel racing in the United States.

Roger Penske, chairman and founder of Penske Corporation, poses for a portrait after a press conference detailing the purchase of Hulman & Company, which includes Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the NTT IndyCar Series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway Productions subsidiaries, by Penske Entertainment Corp., a subsidiary of Penske Corporation on Monday, Nov. 4, 2019.

“My ease speaks to Roger’s character more than anything,” said George Steinbrenner IV, the grandson of the late longtime owner of the New York Yankees and current co-owner of Colton Herta’s IndyCar ride. “Roger’s been around 50 years and has such a sparkling reputation for a very real reason with the way he’s gone about things.

“There’s obvious things you can point to that could be seen as worrying, but that speaks to his character and how he’s run his operation the last 50 years. You think about it for a short second, and then you realize, ‘No, it’s Roger, no we’re fine.’”

It's a sport where millions of dollars are invested knowing a fraction of a second over several hours can be the difference. The sport's owner configuring rules to give his own drivers even the smallest hint of an advantage could be a death knell for a circuit working to find traction.

Penske knows it. His competitors know it. The family that just sold him the sport, as well as those employees he’s now in charge of, know it, too. Penske’s love for the history and progress of the series and its most famous racetrack are why Tony George sought him out for stewardshipin the first place.

And IndyCar, like any sport, has safeguards to protect its integrity. Cars will always be meticulously combed over before each race to make sure everything is above board. Simply put: the engineering integrity of the cars would be quite possibly the toughest way for Penske’s cars to find an unfair advantage among the rest of the field.

Insider knowledge would seem to prove nearly as difficult. At his own racetrack in Belle Isle since 2012, Penske’s cars have won just four of the 15 races. Since 2016, Penske cars have won at least nine races in three of the four years. Their low was just six out of 17 in 2018.

“I’m actually going to sleep better at night knowing Roger is at the helm,” said Michael Shank, co-owner of Meyer Shank Racing. “There are so many ways you can monitor performance in IndyCar, and we have so many smart people working behind the scenes on teams that monitor data and information from other teams. … If you even consider taking any sort of advantage, that ruins everything he’s just worked 50 years to make, so in my opinion, I don’t think there’s any possible way he’d risk his new stewardship to win two more races or another 500. There’s too many people watching him and too much to lose, and they’ll be hyper-sensitive to it, too.

“He’s built his whole life on ethics at the highest level.”

And, of course, the precedent was set prior to Penske’s purchase. George owned and ran Vision Racing in the IRL in the early 2000’s and still co-owns Ed Carpenter Racing with his stepson, the team's namesake. In NASCAR, the France family has long held stakes in team ownership without issue.

But with Penske, the issue is different. Never has the most successful, most powerful team owner in the series taken hold of the most important steering wheel, put now in a prime position to swing the tides of certain hot-button issues in whichever way he sees fit.

That is why he charged at the issue head-on during Monday’s introductory news conference.

Does he still hold strong feelings about guaranteed entries for full-season teams for the Indianapolis 500? You could easily see it Monday. Penske toed the line of political and honest, but it’s clear he understands the role he must now own – a switch from lobbyist to final decision-maker, where he’ll need to listen now moreso than speak.

“There’s got to be a bright line, and to me, I know what my job is,” he said. “Hopefully I’ve got enough credibility with everyone that we can be sure that there is not a conflict, and I’ll do my very best to be sure there isn’t.

“I can say anything I want that might make sense, but the real report card will come in 2020. ‘Have I been able to deal with this?’ We’ll get the grade.”