A dark cloud of controversy is hanging over Roger Penske at present. It first appeared last year, a month after the St. Petersburg IndyCar race. Team Penske landed a huge penalty as two of its drivers used an illegal push-to-pass system. Barely a year later, another fiasco emerged as illegally modified attenuators for the Indy 500 landed Penske in deep trouble. Despite these clearly ominous signs, IndyCar fans still want to retain Penske.

While IndyCar is an open-wheel racing series, NASCAR comprises stock cars. Well, this is only one point of difference between the two disciplines – there are so many more. So, fans cannot possibly imagine the fusion of the two, although such a possibility is imminent.

Is NASCAR stepping into Roger Penske’s playground?

Well, the stock car racing series is a big enterprise. NASCAR had humble beginnings in 1948, but it ballooned by leaps and bounds under the France family’s control. At present, Jim France and Co. own not only NASCAR but also International Speedway Corporation, which operates the majority of tracks in the Cup Series schedule. In addition, they also own IMSA, or the International Motor Sports Association. That ownership may lead to a new avenue with recent developments in IndyCar. The recent scandals under Roger Penske have raised eyebrows, considering that he is the owner of the IndyCar Series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Some in the sport are under the impression that Roger Penske himself meddles in race control or attempts to assert undue advantage for his team via the application of IndyCar’s rule book. This has led to substantive conversations around potentially handing race control duties as soon as 2026 or 2027 to an outside body. FIA and USAC were initially on the cards, but they have been ruled out. Now, IMSA is a strong contender, as a NASCAR expert recently wrote: “Now would be an excellent time for IMSA to purchase the IndyCar series. Let Roger keep the Indy 500 and his events, but these conflict of interests would be gone if IMSA was in control of the series. There’s already synergy between teams running in both series.”

IndyCar president Doug Boles recently dropped hints in a ‘Racer‘ interview. Efforts are ongoing to shave off blame from Roger Penske’s shoulders. Boles said, “There’s obviously a variety of directions you could go to make it clearly independent and disconnected from any influence from the series or Penske Entertainment. We have worked through a couple of different scenarios that we’ll begin to share with the paddock. In fact, some of the folks I’ve talked to [in] the last couple days, [and hopefully more] in the next couple of weeks, and then we’ll start seeing where we go. We’re 100 percent committed to making sure that it’s implemented by the ’26 season.” If we keep the slight hints towards ‘owning’ another sport aside, the charm of open-wheel captures even the best. Remember Dale Jr.’s recent visit to the Miami Grand Prix?

Invited by Red Bull Racing and Hard Rock, Dale Jr. took a road trip down to Miami and met four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen. “I wanted to tell Max like, ‘Dude, I appreciate everything you do for the sim world, you legitimize it,’” Dale Jr. shared his post-meeting thoughts. But why is a NASCAR veteran praising one of the best F1 drivers for the evolution of sim racing? It’s because Junior was the one who had seen this coming a long time ago.

“20 years ago, when I tried to tell my team that Sims were cool…they laughed and now they’re all spending millions of dollars,” Dale Jr. revealed. Sim racing is actually helping young drivers, and this will develop the entire motorsport world.

Despite the objective to usher in more transparency, fans are not on board. That is because the France family is not so favorable.

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Fans bash the idea of a crossover

Well, sports crossovers are usually fun, but this one may not be. NASCAR is currently embroiled in a lawsuit lodged by 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports. One of the things these teams accused the sanctioning body of was ‘monopolistic practices.’ With Michael Jordan, an NBA legend, leading this case, the lawsuit is already quite famous. With the France family already owning IMSA, the notion of furthering their ‘monopolistic’ hold made an IndyCar fan shudder. They wrote, “So you want NASCAR to essentially own IndyCar as well? I feel like that’s a bad idea.” Somebody else painted a pretty dire picture of the American motorsports scenario. It would have ‘France’ written all over. “Would mean NASCAR controls all 3 major American racing series.” Another fan summed up their opinion in a very simple message. “Nooooooo nononono nooo not ever.”

IndyCar fans are also well aware of what NASCAR fans dislike in their sport. Somebody named all the unpopular policies that the sport has adopted. They also mentioned the ominous appearance of NASCAR right before the split with CART. The comment read: “No to IMSA! They are owned by NASCAR! I do not want stages, play offs , green white checkers , 520 mile 500 mile races and all the other contrived BS NASCAR has dumped on their fans. Look to what happened when they raced at IMS in ‘94 . Precursor to the split in 96. Careful for what you wish !!!!” Somebody else showed a green signal to the proposition, but with a prominent condition. “If IMSA was independent of nascar, yes, but the France family owns IMSA.”

The idea of letting NASCAR into IndyCar’s playground is not appealing to fans, who would rather pardon Roger Penske. As the story unfolds, let us see what happens.