Tony George doesn’t run the IRL anymore, he’s not on the Board of the Hulman-George Companies, and he’s shuddered Vision Racing. Newman-Haas-Lanigan appears to be a ride buying prep shop for 2010 which leaves Graham Rahal in the dirt (A recent Tweet from Graham mentioned that he was still working out regularly in case an opportunity were to arise). Penske and Ganassi are still around with their powerhouse drivers. Penske is actually expanding to a three car effort with Will Power which is excellent news. Danica is staying with AGR as is ever popular Tony Kanaan. So there is some good with the bad.

Overall though I’m having a hard time not just staring straight at the bad. Tony G has been ousted or removed himself from all contacts to the series and The Speedway. This appears to be directly related to his family getting tired of how much money he’s spent propping up the IRL since 1996. So now if he’s gone and the family members left in charge aren’t interested in pumping money into the series any longer what is going to happen? I’m going out on a limb here and saying, Nothing Good!

No one has made any specific statements of course and no public goals have been set for the series but it seems that unification in itself didn’t heal the wounds of open wheel racing in America. Many of us were naive enough to think that two series with more than 10 or so teams would merge to result in a series with 20 teams and 30+ cars for each event. That didn’t happen.

We also thought that merging the two groups together would allow for sponsors to finally see a single series that was more easily recognizable by the American public. That doesn’t really appear to have happened either.

What about new and interested folks wanting to start IndyCar teams? Not so much. Although some new teams pop up hear and there they usually fade into the woodwork pretty quickly.

I love Indy Car and will continue to watch. I’ll go to races and recommend others do as well, but you gotta be concerned at the state of affairs as we await the start of the 2010 Indy Car season.

Penske Racing DHL RS Spyder 2007 ALMS Photo Credit: kptyson

Autoweek is reporting that Penske racing will campaign three Indycar entries, two NASCAR Nationwide series cars, and three Sprint Cup cars in 2010. Noticeably absent from that list is any sports car series entrants. Drivers Sam Hornish Jr. and Kurt Busch will return, with the addition of Brad Keselowski for Cup. Justin Allgaier will be joined by Keselowski for Nationwide. The Indycar drivers will be Ryan Briscoe, Helio Castroneves, and full time next year, Will Power.

It was enjoyable to see Penske campaigning sports cars the last few years under the Porsche banner. The successful organization brings credibility to any series they run. Plus Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas are top notch sports car racers and deserve to be in elite cars. Surely they will land somewhere if The Captain can’t put something together last minute to keep them in the stable. Hopefully Penske will be back in road racing in the near future.