MADISON, Ill. – After a year of serious, formal discussions between Penske Entertainment officials and IndyCar team owners, the series recently sent teams a formal proposal of its long-awaited charter system for review and feedback. The series is as close as it’s been over the last 12 months at putting a formalized entry system into place. Establishing such a system would give charter-holding teams a concrete asset that, ideally, would grow in value and give them something to sell – either in part or full – if they wished to downsize or leave the series altogether.

According to multiple series sources who spoke with IndyStar, paperwork was delivered last week and teams have sent the document to either their respective legal teams or are going through an extensive review for programs with multiple stakeholders. A Penske Entertainment official confirmed to IndyStar that a set of terms for the system had recently been distributed but emphasized that there is no specific timeline or deadline to approve and formally launch IndyCar’s latest foray into franchises. The series official also noted that it would be incorrect to infer that an announcement is looming, though the finish line is closer than it has ever been.

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The idea of establishing a charter system in IndyCar was initially brought to the table by Penske Entertainment officials during a team owners meeting last August, but talks stalled within months – largely after the series proposed that teams buy into the system for $1 million per charter. For reference, when NASCAR introduced its own charter system a decade ago, they freely handed out the 36 assets.

Talks picked back up earlier this year and quickly reached another sticking point: Would these charters guarantee a spot on the Indy 500 starting grid. After IndyStar published a story where many team owners expressed their belief that such a provision was a necessity, fan pushback at the idea of altering the framework of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing was swift. Before the start of the season, Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles told a select group of reporters that guaranteed entry into the 500 had been slashed from current proposal talks.

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At that time, Miles stated his wishes were to hash out a finalized system by May, to announce it around the Indy 500. Movement was much slower than anticipated, though, as IndyCar brass tackled the introduction of the series new many-times-delayed hybrid system while also securing a new exclusive media rights partner in Fox – discussions which heated up in May.

By that point, too, the series had also announced that PREMA Racing would join IndyCar with two full-time Chevy-powered entries starting with the 2025 campaign. At the time of the new team’s unveiling in April, it had been made clear that PREMA would not be granted charters under the current vision for the system, to award longtime teams and their backers for their historical support.

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This spring, IndyStar learned that the basic foundations for the framework of the charter system was that 25 would be awarded across the 10 current teams – covering all the current entries, with a maximum of three per team, excluding Chip Ganassi Racing’s current fourth and fifth entries. Holding a charter would grant a team the potential of landing one of the 22 spots in IndyCar’s current Leaders Circle program that currently pays the owners of qualified entries just over $1 million a year in race earnings spread out in multiple installments. Similarly, the current Leaders Circle program is open to all full-time entries – with a maximum of three per team – and the payments go out to the previous year’s top 22 eligible entries from the final points standings.

Established in the spring, IndyCar also planned to set a maximum of 27 cars per race outside the 500, meaning only two unchartered cars would qualify for each race. With the addition of PREMA – and if CGR were to stay at more than three cars beyond 2024 – then qualifying would determine which unchartered cars wouldn’t make each race starting in 2025.

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The series hasn't publicly shared specifics of the system that has been discussed among the full team owner contingent, as well as in more private small group (or one-on-one) meetings. Miles did tell IndyStar on race day morning at Road America in early-June that Penske Entertainment officials had made a significant change to the system’s current framework that morning and called off a team owners meeting for later that day. Subsequent meetings two weeks later at Laguna Seca were only among select owners, according to a series source, and it’s unclear what type – if any – high-level meetings have taken place since.

When asked about the general framework of the current charter proposal delivered to teams to review last week, one series source noted they hadn’t had a chance to comb through it line-by-line but believed that the general framework noted above was still in place.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar owners reviewing formal charter proposal from Penske Entertainment