NASCAR Insider Defends Roger Penske After Public Attacks Over IndyCar Shenanigans by Michael Andretti

There’s trouble brewing in the IndyCar Series and Michael Andretti seems to be at the forefront of that. Recently, the motorsports legend took sharp jabs at series owner Roger Penske, asking him to sell the series if he was not going to invest in it. But it’s important to note that Penske is a motorsports legend in his own right. Some would say even bigger than Michael Andretti. So it was not a surprise when people came out in support of the 87-year-old.

Chip Ganassi recently came to Penske’s defence. This time it was the co-host of the Door Bumper Clear podcast, TJ Majors. Majors was a spotter for Brad Keselowski‘s #6 car at the Phoenix Raceway on Sunday. Speaking about the whole Andretti-Penske beef, he claimed that it was hard to believe when someone criticized the 87-year-old about not investing money in a series that he spent several million dollars to purchase in the first place.

Roger Penske still has his fair share of supporters

One fact that cannot be overlooked is that the IndyCar Series truly is in bad shape. Brett Griffin laid out everything wrong with the competition just a few moments before Majors had his say and it was concerning to hear. An inadequate number of races, not enough cars, and poor strategies to market their drivers are at the forefront of people losing interest in the once-great competition as per the spotter. To top that off, Griffin also believes that their TV deal at the moment is “garbage.”

However, he was still critical of Michael Andretti taking shots at the owner of a competition just before the new season began. As far as Majors was concerned, he had a hard time believing that Roger Penske was not willing to invest in the competition any longer and he let his feelings be known.

“It’s hard to read somebody being critical of Roger Penske because…for me, I think as popular as it’s been in the last decade or so, or maybe more, you don’t know the drivers but you didn’t know the drivers then aside from the Andrettis. But we see first hand, we go to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, we see the effect Roger Penske has had on that place. Everything is immaculate. So it’s hard for me to believe that he is not fully invested in making this the best it could be,” he said.

Andretti was brutal in his criticism of the NASCAR legend, but there is reason for him to be upset. It’s popular belief that Roger Penske’s proposal to have a charter-like system in IndyCar where each car would have to pay $1 million to have a guaranteed starting position and stable prize money was why the former race car driver lost his cool.

What triggered Michael Andretti to launch his scathing attack?

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It could be because Andretti’s team has more than one car under their banner and that would see them paying more than a million. Speaking about the proposed charter, the 61-year-old called the idea comical and urged the series owner to not take their money to invest in the series. That’s when he suggested Penske sell the series so that someone else could come in and properly invest in it instead of coming up with such schemes.

“From what I understood about the first proposal about the charters…it was comical,” he said as per a report. “First of all, $20 million isn’t going to do anything. You’ve got to have five times that number — at least. And it’s like, ‘Don’t take our money, Roger. You bought the series. We don’t own the series.’”

“Then sell the series. There’s people out there willing to do it. I think there’s a lot of people on the sidelines thinking, ‘This is a diamond in the rough if you do it right.’ But what you need is big money behind it to get it to that level, and if he’s not willing to do it, I think he should step aside and let someone else buy it,” he added.

The Penske team has released a response, stating that they have sponsors willing to invest in the competition, but it was a well-worded diplomatic answer. The actual tension between the two must be sky high and it will be interesting to see how they interact throughout the campaign.

Read More – “Not Going to Sharpshoot Him” – Chip Ganassi Defends IndyCar Owner Roger Penske After Michael Andretti’s “Sell the Series” Condemnation