Penske downplays short-term prospects for WEC race at Indy

The venue for the FIA WEC's annual race in the United States beyond this season remains unclear, following comments earlier today from Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Roger Penske ahead of the opening WEC race of the season at the Lusail International Speedway in Qatar,

Penske --whose team also operates Porsche’s factory Hypercar and IMSA GTP programs -- appeared to play down the prospects of the Speedway joining the calendar any time soon.

“I think at the moment it’s a scheduling situation,” he said when asked for an update on talks between IMS and the WEC for a future event. “We’d love to have it come at some point. Now, we will have an IMSA six-hour race in September this year, which will be good.

“There’s a lot of interest in sports car racing worldwide now. Talking to Pierre (Fillon, ACO president) at Le Mans, you look at Imola, these places, the interest in tickets, there are some very very high levels of interest. It’s good for us, and good for Porsche.”

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This year the FIA WEC will visit Austin's Circuit of The Americas for the first time since 2020. The return of the Lone Star Le Mans event replaces the championship’s Sebring doubleheader with IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, but it is believed the deal for the COTA event is for a single year.

Penske, however, seemingly all but ruled out the WEC visiting the Brickyard in the short term. He suggested that he wouldn’t mind COTA remaining on the calendar if this year’s event proves to be a success.

“I don’t have anything to announce, I don’t think we are ready to do something in the next 24 months,” Penske said when asked about the possibility for IMS to be on the calendar for 2025. “But I’d love to do something.”

“We’re not here to push them (COTA) out -- if they have a good race there, they should stay there,” he added.

This is a shift in tone on the subject from Penske, who said after Le Mans last summer that he had hoped to have Indianapolis on the calendar in 2024.

“We had good discussions,” he said last July. “We were going to do it in September (2024), which is when they are going to COTA. We were going to do it on the same weekend IMSA was coming and run an event like the doubleheader was at Sebring. But we couldn’t because of TV and the travel for them was going to be impossible.

“It was financial and there was no flexibility for IMSA to change its dates.”