The Rumor Mill is Busy
There is one constant in each offseason of the NTT IndyCar Series, and that is the never-ending supply of rumors. Sometimes the rumors we hear gather steam, and eventually turn into fact. Other times, they last less than a day before being completely laughed off as nothing more than someone’s wild dream that somehow got a little traction. Then there is the rumor that persists and won’t go away. The longer it lasts, many figure “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. Suddenly without any confirmation from anyone, it gains legs and it somehow becomes the perception of reality.
The latter situation is what happened for the past several days. Last Friday, I saw a little nugget in my Twitter feed claiming that word was going around that Michael Andretti was either going to buy into PREMA or purchase the fledgling team outright.
Over the weekend the story started getting traction, especially on social media. It was fodder for the IndyCar-related Facebook groups, who are always willing to gobble up stuff like this. They bat it around so much that somewhere in the discussion, it is assumed to be true.
When I first heard about it on Friday, the very first thing that went through my head was how strange it would be for Michael Andretti to be directly competing with Andretti Global, the team he bought from Barry Green after the 2002 CART season, moved to the IRL for the 2003 season and re-branded as Andretti Green Racing (AGR).
Although that seemed odd, it has happened in racing before. Former driver and safety pioneer Bill Simpson founded Simpson Performance Products, makers of racing seatbelts, fire suits, helmets, gloves, shoes and other driver safety products. After Dale Earnhardt was fatally injured at Daytona in 2001, it was determined by NASCAR that the Simpson seatbelts had failed. After receiving death threats and having his home shot at, Simpson resigned from the company he had founded and sued NASCAR for $8,5 Million for defamation of character. The two parties settled out of court.
Later, Simpson founded IMPACT! Racing – a direct competitor to Simpson Performance Products to the company he founded in 1958. He had customers in IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula 1, NHRA and others. Simpson sold IMPACT! In 2010 and passed away in 2019. It always seemed strange that Bill Simpson successfully competed against Simpson Performance Products in his later years.
Going a little further back, Pat Patrick sold his Patrick Racing team to Chip Ganassi in the late 80s, in a very complicated transaction that I won’t go into here. By 1990, the sale was complete and the team name was changed to Chip Ganassi Racing, with Eddie Cheever as their sole driver. For the 1990 season, Patrick took over the struggling Alex Morales Racing and their project of trying to develop that Alfa-Romeo engine. The new team was re-branded as…Patrick Racing. Although the name was the same as the old team, the team shop and assets were completely different.
I didn’t mean to go down those rabbit holes, but it does show that Michael Andretti competing against Andretti Global would not be completely unprecedented.
After I thought how weird it might be to have Andretti competing against Andretti, the next thing I thought about was the new charter system. If you recall, when the charter system went into effect last offseason, it allowed a charter for twenty-five cars on the grid, with a maximum of three charters per team. That is why Ganassi went from five cars in 2024, down to three this past season. An arrangement was made to send Ganassi driver Marcus Armstrong to Meyer Shank Racing, while Linus Lundqvist was out of a ride.
The grid at all non-Indianapolis 500 races was capped at twenty-seven cars. PREMA came into the series knowing that there were no charters available to them. And their presence made up the final two spots allowed on the grid. If a team wanted to run an extra car for a race, or another team showed up for a race, then that would leave three unchartered cars to battle for the two remaining spots on the grid. Word has it that PREMA approached a couple of the smaller teams in case they wanted to sell one of theirs. This would guarantee at least one of the cars would qualify if more than twenty-seven cars showed up for a race weekend.
Whether PREMA did approach certain teams is not known. What is known is that while PREMA’s future for 2026 is currently uncertain – they have no charters. Anyone seeking to buy them would only be getting their team shop, their cars and what would be left of their staff. They would have no charters, and no assurances of getting even one – ever! That does not sound very attractive, especially to a Michael Andretti, who has won championships and Indianapolis 500s in his previous ownership role.
Once I thought about PREMA’s lack of charters, I did not have a whole lot of faith in the reports I was reading that Michael Andretti would be a part-or full owner of PREMA. It would be pretty much of a no-win situation. Still that didn’t stop the Facebook groups from gushing about Andretti returning to the series with an Italian team. Reading all of their speculation, you’d swear it was a done deal.
Yesterday, Michael Andretti put out the following tweet, pretty much squashing any thought of him purchasing anything from PREMA.
Does that put an end to the speculation? In my mind, it does. Maybe I take things too much at face-value, but when someone comes out and states that clearly that there is nothing to it and does not allow any wiggle room – I will take them at their word.
Besides, it makes no sense. From what I’m told, Michael Andretti is enjoying life away from the team and the track. And is he completely bought out and divorced from Andretti Global? I thought he had some small role and was still a part-owner. Even if he is completely separated from his former team, does he really want to take on such a daunting task at age 63? I wouldn’t think so, but what do I know?
One thing I know is that it was interesting to see such an unfounded rumor get legs so quickly and take off. How much crazier would it have gotten if Michael had not put a stop to it yesterday? This is going to be a long offseason.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
October 22, 2025 at 12:44 pm
I thought the Andretti-PREMA rumor seemed quite unlikely from the get go, but stranger things have happened… even after stark denials from the parties who wound up being involved.
On the thought of someone competing against a team/group/company they once owned, I’m always reminded of Ross Perot. Perot sold Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to General Motors in the late 1980s and then founded the very similar Perot Systems shortly after. This is all Indycar-relevant, believe it or not.
EDS was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2008 and renamed Hewlett-Packard Enterprise before later being spun off from HP as DXC Technology… the company sponsored Simon Pagenaud at Penske under both of these names, as many of us will recall.
Perot Systems, meanwhile, was sold to Dell in 2009. Dell sold the company, which they had renamed Dell Services, to NTT Data in 2016. I think we all know how they are involved in Indycar.
To top it off, the fact that EDS established its headquarters in Plano, TX decades ago is likely a huge reason that Indycar will be racing in Arlington next year. The employment base built by EDS in and around Plano years ago was an undeniable influence on NTT Data’s decision to base their US operations in Plano (where they were located even prior to the acquisition of Perot Systems/Dell Services… also headquartered in Plano), and NTT’s desire for a new race in their home market is undeniably a factor in why Arlington is joining the schedule.