IndyCar sets new-car leadership structure

02/21/2025 04:01 PM

Penske Entertainment has chosen to place two of its non-competition executives in charge of its new-car project.

In what is traditionally the exclusive domain of a racing series president and their technical staff, the series' executive branch has appointed Penske Entertainment CEO Mark Miles as one of the two new directors of the future chassis and engine formula. Miles is joined on the steering committee by Rich Shearing, COO of the Penske Automotive Group. Like Miles, the well-respected Shearing has no experience in the technical or engineering side of motor racing.

Former IndyCar president Jay Frye was the third member of the new-car leadership group, but with his recent dismissal, Frye's duties pass to new IndyCar president Doug Boles who, like Miles and Shearing, brings no race car design or engineering experience to the crafting of a new IndyCar.

"I haven’t done this before, and I’m not leading this," Miles told RACER. "I’m observing it and trying to ask the right questions and making sure that our key stakeholders are involved."

With Shearing – an unfamiliar name to fans of the series – described by some of the team owners who've interacted with him as the “quarterback” leading Penske's future IndyCar project, Miles was asked to fill in the gaps around Shearing's role in shaping and defining the next IndyCar engine and chassis package.

"He’s a valuable contributor to the effort to the team," Miles said. "He’s an engineer. He is a successful businessperson. He has a great background in systems and process development. And he has made himself available while he does his day job to help us and the IndyCar people work through the process. He’s, I think, added enormous value. It’s sort of emblematic of the Penske Corporation approach, which is you take advantage of assets wherever you find them. And his experience and his brain are certainly great assets for this process. So I’ve been really pleased that he’s been able to find time to help."

Despite being a newcomer to IndyCar, the aforementioned team owners have spoken of Shearing in high regard.

"He knows a lot about suppliers like Ilmor," Miles added. "He knows a fair amount about the technology. He knows what he doesn’t know. He’s not a race engineer, but he’s a really good facilitator and in process development. He has that kind of experience. So he doesn’t have a formal role – he doesn’t have a title. I just think he’s been a great asset.

"But there are these Wednesday meetings, all the IndyCar guys are on them. When I say IndyCar guys, I mean (IndyCar's technical and engineering team), without exception. So I think those are the people that you would identify as who you’d expect to be front and center in developing a new car, and they are."

With Frye replaced by Boles, Frye's main administrator Mark Sibla will play a big role going forward – a major assignment on his desk is to keep the new-car project in motion and on task. He was actively working on it before the change, and was significantly involved on the recent move to hybridization.

RACER understands Ilmor, the engine company co-founded and co-owned by Roger Penske which makes Chevrolet's IndyCar engines and operates IndyCar's spec energy recovery system program, has been a significant voice and resource for the new-car steering group.

Penske, as Miles shared, is also centrally involved in the decision-making process for whatever Dallara will make to replace the DW12 chassis and power is successor.

"We don’t say who makes which decisions," he said. "Many of these decisions will be made by Roger Penske, the owner of the series. None of this, however, is being done in a way that, in my opinion, could pre-ordain the results on the track from the point of view, for example, of Chevy or Honda. Much of it is designed to try to bring in additional OEMs. And again, there’s not one person working on that. People — including Roger and us and the other obvious cast of characters — are working on that too."

Often presented as the ‘2027 car’, most members of the IndyCar paddock do not expect the new formula to go live before 2028, which Miles acknowledged as a possibility.

"Everybody sort of works collaboratively to fix these dates, and they are the team, the broad team of suppliers and our IndyCar people; they want to get it right more than get it done by a certain date, and so it’s a little bit more fluid," he said.

"Those deadlines are subject to some change. If we can have it by '27, that would be great. And we’re thinking about it in terms of value, in terms of evaluating whether that’s possible, what the risks are. But if it’s not doable, and doable with clarity and certainty, then we won’t put it out for '27."