Q: With silly season in full swing, I’m thinking about how an Abel Motorsports IndyCar entry next year for the 500 or a partial season would happen, and one factor influencing this is how the Abel-Enerson agreement for the 2022 500 played out. Do you know any details of what was involved in the deal? Was it merely as simple as the Enersons donating the use of their chassis for the 500 in exchange for RC getting to drive the car? Did Bill Abel do it mostly just for the challenge and experience to gauge future plans? Do you know of any other more concrete plans for further IndyCar racing by either of these groups?
Ted T., Chicago
MP: I understand it was a proper business arrangement between Neal Enerson, a successful businessman and longtime racer/owner/entrant, and Bill Abel, who is all of the same things as Neal. Bill wanted to be in the 500, and has aspirations of being in IndyCar on a more regular basis, but he isn’t rushing into things and doesn’t want to harm the Indy NXT program by tilting things too heavily towards IndyCar too quickly. The Enersons would be running their own program if they had the funding, but don’t, so that’s where Bill, with the people and the infrastructure, were able to take the Enersons’ car and go run RC.
Looking ahead, I can say that the truly impressive effort put forth by Bill Abel’s John Brunner-led team has drawn the interest of others who want to do a co-entry for next year, and drivers who see Abel Motorsports is a quality and viable program that can do well at the 500.
Q: Well, I guess I might add to the subject of marbles. Trading marbles for a slower lap, more driver skill and more passing sounds like a great idea. Not to mention lots of tire smoke, sliding, correcting, long passing attacks, etc. What is so dang bad? IndyCar is not trying to set ultimate lap times. It is a spec series with old cars. I think something that highlights driver skill and adds spectacle would be welcomed. Who really benefits from marbles? What are the advantages of marbles, besides a slower lap time?
Mark
MP: I know the idea of super-hard tires that generate few marbles sounds like an amazing gift, but it really isn’t when we’re talking about a form of racing where ultimate speed and performance is what separates IndyCar from NASCAR and other types of racing where mind-bending visuals aren’t possible. Why on earth anyone would want to turn an IndyCar into something where using the throttle with any aggression is a liability is beyond me.
Q: I was reading an article regarding Kyle Larson’s entry for Indy next year and it had a quote from Rick Hendrick stating that he wanted to own that car but needed another existing team for the technical support. In past articles you’ve mentioned that McLaren would like to possibly run a fourth car full-time next year. Do you think it’s possible that Hendrick Motorsports would be interested in being that satellite team? I know that’s probably a long shot, but it would be a way for them to get their foot in the door. And Jeff Gordon always dreamed of being in IndyCar, so who better to lead them into it?
Justin, St. Petersburg, FL
MP: If we get to 2025 or 2026 and we don’t have a full-time McLaren-Hendrick IndyCar entry, I will be surprised. Arrow McLaren needs to move into the current Andretti Autosport shop, which McLaren has purchased, and when that happens ahead of the 2025 season, all kinds of growth can happen.
Q: I’m sure there’s been an avalanche of Alex Palou contract emails already, but I hadn’t seen this perspective raised before so here goes:
From what I know of the situation, Palou’s original contract with Ganassi had a clause that prevented Palou from negotiating or signing a contract with another team before a certain date (IIRC September 2022), which wasn’t respected in negotiating with McLaren, which is how Alex wound up staying at Ganassi in the first place. Furthermore, in the last Mailbag, you stated that the extension with Ganassi had a similar no-compete with a date of September 1, 2023 — a date that hasn’t occurred yet.
By my reading, contractually Palou hasn’t been able to even talk to anyone but Chip for the entire time he’s been at Ganassi, which would leave him free to re-sign with Ganassi now, or wait it out until September and sign with whomever else he wants to.
In the 2022 version of Palou-to-McLaren, it seems to me that the blame was on Alex and his management for not respecting the contract he had with Ganassi. In the 2023 version, it seems to me that both McLaren and Palou’s management should have known better given their previous experience. It’s more interesting to me that Palou seems to have been dumped by his management, rather than Alex firing them for gross incompetence.
Craig Drabik
MP: The deal in 2022 was a bit more complicated as the fracas stemmed from Ganassi taking up Palou’s option for 2023 and some form of disagreement as to whether that happened correctly or not, or after the negotiating window had already opened, and Alex signed elsewhere as a result and Ganassi was late, or something along those lines, as I recall Palou’s side suggested.
There’s another layer here where Alex did sign a contract with McLaren for his F1 testing, so there was a valid agreement in place for that, but yeah, the apparent signing of a racing contract for 2024 while allegedly unable to sign such a thing prior to Sept. 1 is a bit tricky.
Where things appear to be clear, regardless of whether Ganassi has a legal standing to pursue McLaren or not, is McLaren Racing, in the UK, entered into a contract with Palou — and I’m not sure under what business name or location — that, according to Zak Brown’s email, paid Palou for future services. Assuming everything about that is true, it might be a straightforward lawsuit of McLaren going after a guy who agreed to work for someone, took money for that work before performing that work, and, we assume, hasn’t voluntarily returned it. If he has returned it, we can then assume the lawsuit has vengeful motivations behind it.
Also, make no mistake that Alex and his former managers knew exactly what they were doing and creating for themselves and signing. They aren’t babes in the woods who were tricked into taking money from McLaren.
Whatever it is, it isn’t looking good for Palou’s bank account and future earnings if McLaren wins, because if that happens, a decent amount of Chip’s money is going to land in Alex’s hands and go right back out the door to McLaren.