IndyCar Team Owners Embrace New Charter System Despite NASCAR’s Past Charter Woes

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — It may not look like it at first glance, but a new era has dawned for the NTT IndyCar Series starting this weekend, and it’s an era that the NASCAR community has experienced for almost 10 years.

Amid the bustle of fans and pit crew members alike within the confines of the St. Petersburg street course parking garage sat a number of haulers for the IndyCar teams.

Among them was Ed Carpenter Racing, a team that had recently obtained a key investor and new co-owner in Ted Gelov, owner of Heartland Food Products Group.

A powerful driver lineup.
Exciting new partners.
Expanded ownership.

Introducing the next era of ECR. @JavaHouse / @Splenda / #INDYCAR pic.twitter.com/7EHg8ldGdz

— Ed Carpenter Racing (@ECRIndy) January 13, 2025

IndyCar announced a charter system in September of 2024 that allowed each team to secure a guaranteed starting position in each race with the exception of the Indianapolis 500. That suddenly made IndyCar team ownership or investment very attractive. So attractive, in fact, that Gelov added an investment of a rumored whopping $40,000,000 to the open wheel team.

Gelov’s generous investment was visible for ECR’s group, for instance, as crew members worked on colorfully sponsored vehicles next to highly branded team haulers. By looking at them, you wouldn’t have guessed they were a midfield team only six months earlier, and one can certainly understand why team founder Ed Carpenter would sing the charter system’s praises as a result.

“It played a role,” Carpenter told Frontstretch of the charter’s impact on Gelov’s investment. “The charter aspect definitely made it more appealing than it would have otherwise been.

“I think you’re going to see it with more teams over time. It creates something that didn’t exist before. I don’t think anybody at this point feels that there aren’t positives coming from it.”

He’s correct, too. Among the many individuals Frontstretch caught up with throughout the weekend, most of them had something nice to say about the sport’s new charter system.

Even Chip Ganassi, a former NASCAR team owner himself, had nothing but nice things to say about the new system.

“I think it’s a great thing,” 16-time series champion team owner Ganassi said. “Maybe that’s something that doesn’t translate down to fans. … But it’s something that the team owners badly need to be a viable business. That’s something that the charter system does.”

It isn’t only the big teams that seem to be embracing the new system, either.

“The sport needed to grow,” Juncos Hollinger Racing driver Sting Ray Robb told Frontstretch. “That was just a stepping stone for us as a team effort to do that. … I think it does help our team a little bit. … It does equal the playing ground a little bit between the bigger teams and little teams.”

All of the aforementioned have a point. The new charter system is designed to assist teams that are already in the sport as charters gain in value over time.

“Whether you’re talking about racing, oil, or gold or bitcoin, when there’s some scarcity of anything that increases the value,” Carpenter said. “I do think it’s going to be a massive long-term win for our sport to create some scarcity.”

But what about teams that aren’t already in the sport?

“Depending on how you look at it, for [teams] that are already in [IndyCar], it’s a positive,” Carpenter said. “For those that hadn’t gotten in yet, it could be made as a negative.”

For NASCAR fans, this scenario may sound familiar. There have been many times where potential team owners have displayed interest in entering the NASCAR Cup Series only to be turned away by the charters’ high cost; including one Dale Earnhardt Jr., who has stated many times his interest in entering the Cup Series level of the sport with JR Motorsports.

There’s also the issue of what happens if a current team wants to expand, as expensive charters may keep small teams from expanding, even if they find enough success to warrant the expansion.

Despite this, Carpenter still sees the good side of the issue and isn’t worried about it in the short term.

“That’s always a challenge,” the former full-time IndyCar driver said. “But if that’s the case, it means a lot of other things are going really well, and the value’s real. I haven’t spent much time worrying about that at this point.”

A similar thing was likely said during the infant years of NASCAR’s own charter years, but the stock car racing series has since seen various complications including closures of championship-winning teams, smaller fields and an ongoing lawsuit from one of its most competitive drivers to boot. All of which arguably stem from the charter system.

It is true that the new charters may help develop small teams in the long run, and perhaps it will bring new investors into open-wheel racing. IndyCar is entering a year of optimism thanks to the widely welcomed new coverage from FOX, and seeing a charter system bring in the likes of investors such as Gelov to make teams like ECR competitive is a breath of fresh air.

But how long that optimism will last, and if it sticks around longer than NASCAR’s, remains to be seen.