WEST ALLIS, Wisc. – Penske Entertainment is days away from mailing IndyCar team owners a nearly 30-page final copy of the series’ initial charter agreement that will give the 10 current teams a combined 25 individual assets to represent their participation in the sport, series CEO Mark Miles told select reporters Friday. After targeting a May rollout of the program in preseason talks with media earlier this year, IndyCar's charter system is likely to be announced shortly after the 2024 finale on Sept. 15 at Nashville Superspeedway.

According to Miles, the review period for teams led to little, if any, material changes to the program that has long been known to include 25 charters, cap teams at three charters each and guarantee that 22 of those entries a roughly $1 million cut of prize money annually that has long been called IndyCar’s Leaders Circle program. Additionally, charter holders will not have guaranteed entry into the Indianapolis 500 as had been pushed hard for by many – but not all – team owners last year. Chartered entries are expected to be guaranteed spots in every other race, where there will likely be 27-car grids – forcing unchartered entries to qualify for races if three or more show up.

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“You can find lots of owners who say, ‘I wish this or that was in it,’ and those things might be major to them, but it’s not going to be, so are we going to go on this, or aren’t we?” Miles said of the impending approval of the system that, for the first time, in this iteration of the sport gives team owners a tangible asset that can either continue to grow in value or be sold for their participation in the sport – beyond their shops, tools, spare parts and cars that depreciate once they hit the track.

“Honestly, I think (feedback) varies a lot, depending on which team you’re talking to,” Miles continued. “If you’re a less-wealthy team, it’s, ‘Get it done.’ And if you’re a bigger team, it’s nice. It’s a start. Everybody could come up with things (they wanted to add).”

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In comparison to similar systems in stick-and-ball sports or other racing series like NASCAR, Miles noted that IndyCar’s does not provide any system of governance, nor does it lay out a revenue sharing program beyond the Leaders Circle money that some, but not all, chartered team owners will be handed each year by virtue of their entries’ finish position among those eligible the year prior.

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Even after the year-plus timeframe during which charters were seriously discussed, Miles still contends that most IndyCar team owners would’ve been in favor of gaining automatic entry into the 33-car 500 field but ultimately relented once it became clear public perception of the sea change to traditions around the Greatest Spectacle in Racing were so uniformly negative.

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“Most of them thought we should give them some sort of (guaranteed) participation in the 500, but at the end of the day, we had a really good meeting,” Miles said. “It had been a very widely-held preference, and it would’ve created some extra value for them.

“I think this is all going to be fine. It’s a start.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar charter system weeks away from being finalized