IndyCar strongly deny Liberty Media takeover talk: ‘We wouldn’t sell it’

Penske Corporation president Bud Denker has strongly denied recent rumours that IndyCar is set to be the subject of a takeover bid from F1 owners Liberty Media.

Conquering the US market has been one of the clear goals for Liberty Media ever since Bernie Ecclestone handed them the reins to Formula 1 back in 2017.

With three US races currently on the F1 calendar and Netflix docu-series ‘Drive to Survive’ to thank for a huge uptick in interest from a US audience, a strong argument could be made to say Liberty Media have already completed this objective.

But, the latest churns of the F1 rumour mill recently spat out that Liberty Media were going to go one step further by adding IndyCar to their investment portfolio and create a closer alignment with F1 by essentially turning the open-wheel, single seater series into a US-based feeder class for the ‘pinnacle of motorsport’.

F1 analyst Peter Windsor added further weight to the rumours in a recent video on his YouTube channel saying: “One of the things Liberty are looking at at the moment – and this is quite a good idea – is buying IndyCar to make it effectively an American feeder series for F1.

“How they would do that, I don’t know – maybe get rid of some of the ovals and make it even more road coursey [sic], maybe make the cars a little bit more F1-like, maybe carbon brakes or whatever.

“Maybe that’s why Zak [Brown, McLaren chief executive] is there, I don’t know.

“That’s not a completely stupid idea.

“I think it’s quite a cool idea actually because it’s a place where you could put a lot of good, talented drivers who can’t make it into Formula 1 and then they go and do this American series.

“It makes sense to me to do that.”

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But, Penske Corporation president Denker has categorically denied such claims and made it clear that IndyCar was not for sale.

“There’s no truth to any of that,” Denker told RACER.

“There’s been no discussion, and frankly, we wouldn’t sell it. Being the stewards of the Indy 500 and being stewards of the IndyCar Series go hand in hand.

“We bought this series and bought the Speedway in 2020, and as long as we own both of those, they’re going to stay together.”

The RACER report also mentions that their sources within both the F1 and Liberty Media camps have said the rumours are just “completely wrong”.