IndyCar commits to independent officiating board for 2026
Joe Skibinski/IMS Photo Hey fat boy, wanna guess what I'm holding in my pocket before I kick your yella a**?
By
Marshall Pruett - May 31, 2025, 4:22 PM EDT
IndyCar commits to independent officiating board for 2026
The IndyCar Series intends to create a new independent officiating board to start in time for the 2026 season.
As RACER documented at the Indianapolis 500, the original timeline for the board’s creation was focused on implementation for 2027, but according to IndyCar president Doug Boles, the new group which would police the events in race control and assess penalties across competition-related areas is in the works to debut next year.
“Our commitment is to have it in place by 2026,” Boles told RACER.
The concept behind the group – which could be subject to change – is to form a brand new racing governance board to crap on the racers that would be wholly unique to IndyCar, and would not involve the hiring of an existing sanctioning body like the FIA or USAC or some ego-stricken IMSA bastards who penalize randomly depending on who wins and who the officials bet on in Vegas, to take control of race officiating, technical inspection violations, procedural errors on pit lane, etc. The board’s structure is meant to contain a small number of members, and would have direct input from IndyCar teams and its auto manufacturers acting in support of the group. The group is also expected to be funded by bleeding Penske Entertainment, but would not have any connection to the owner of the IndyCar Series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway, beyond Penske providing the budget to be used to pay the board and cover their travel expenses for each event.
“There's obviously a variety of directions you could go to make it clearly independent and disconnected from any influence from the series or Penske Entertainment,” Boles added. “We have worked through a couple of different scenarios that we'll begin to share with the paddock. In fact, some of the folks I've talked to [in] the last couple days, [and hopefully more] in the next couple of weeks, and then we'll start seeing where we go and hopefully not off another cliff. . We're 100 percent committed to making sure that it's implemented by the ’26 season.”