Penske Entertainment has issued its first formal charter document for NTT IndyCar Series entrants who qualified for participation in the program.
Having asked for a printed version of the charter topics that were discussed for most of the year, RACER has learned Penske Entertainment delivered an in-depth charter plan — said to be approximately 40 pages – late last week.
According to multiple team owners, IndyCar’s 10 existing full-time entrants are meant to review and return the document to Penske Entertainment with feedback by the end of August. This comes after a previous and somewhat recent request for feedback on the charter. Once the newest thoughts are received and reviewed, a final charter document is expected to be produced that would be distributed for signatures and ratification.
In the document distributed to teams last week, the charter follows the majority of the key structural components RACER has documented throughout the season (see below).
Invitations are based on the results of IndyCar’s 2023 entrants’ championship, which means new teams like the incoming PREMA Racing, or part-time teams/Indy-only entrants like Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, are ineligible to receive charters on their first issuance.
Years in the making since Roger Penske purchased the series and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway leading into 2020, the charter program follow the same 3/22/25/27 format as expected.
For those 10 full-time teams from 2023, a maximum of three charters are available per team; 22 Leaders Circle prize money contracts will continue being distributed; 25 total charters will be awarded and those 25 will be protected, giving guaranteed grid spots at every race except for the Indianapolis 500; and a limit of 27 cars competing in each race, except for the traditional 33 at Indy, is the foundation of the charter’s construction.
That’s the 3/22/25/27 plan. But there are caveats.
A two-car team, for example, is only eligible to receive two charters, provided both cars placed within the top 25 in last year’s Entrants’ standings; it wouldn’t get a third if it wanted to add a car in 2025. A three-car team, with all three cars inside last season’s top 25, would get three. IndyCar has no single-car entrants for the full calendar.
And then there’s the lone outlier in the charter eligibility matrix: Chip Ganassi Racing.
Penske Entertainment’s charter filtering process also relies on its Leaders Circle program, which awards $1 million in guaranteed prize money to the top 22 cars in the Entrants’ championship. Under the Leaders Circle rules, teams are limited to having three entries qualify for $1 million contracts – their top three performers in the Entrants’ standings — and with that restriction, Ganassi’s fourth car from 2023, the No. 11 Honda piloted by Marcus Armstrong, was not eligible for a Leaders Circle — it effectively did not exist in the entrants’ championship — and therefore it is not eligible for a charter.
Ganassi also expanded to five cars in 2024 with the new No. 4 Honda for Kyffin Simpson, which strips its eligibility to be part of the charters due to a lack of participation in 2023 and the cap of three charters per team. While it’s presently unconfirmed, RACER expects to see Ganassi trim its five-car squad to three next season, leaving its three charter cars — the Nos. 8, 9, and 10 — as its new downsized effort.