Corey Heim won the Brickyard 400 in stellar fashion, and the part-time driver became the first driver to win on a Brickyard 400 debut since Jeff Gordon won the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994. Coincidentally, like Gordon, Heim's Indianapolis victory is the second of his career. Todd Gilliland took the $1 million prize as NASCAR's In-Season Tournament champion despite having only one top fifteen finish over the five-race tournament. Gilliland was 24th at Indianapolis. John Hunter Nemechek could owe Ryan Blaney. It wasn't all roses after Indianapolis. People were angry and tribal. That is a discussion for another day. There was Formula One is off to its summer break. Formula E had some night races in Tokyo. However, we have some business news.
Sold! To the Team From Carmel!
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing secured its full-time return to the NTT IndyCar Series last week when it purchased a charter from Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. It is the first charter to switch ownership in IndyCar.
In the wake of the passing of team co-founder Dennis Reinbold, notably low Indianapolis 500 payouts to non-chartered entries, and a changing landscape in IndyCar as chartered teams will soon be the only ones allowed to compete in races outside the Indianapolis 500, a charter was imperative to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing's survival. Dreyer & Reinbold Racing is the one team competing in the series that is part-time. For over a decade, D&R has been only running at Indianapolis, sans for the few additional races it ran in 2020. There are no other Indianapolis 500-only teams out there, and D&R's presence has been valuable to the series and its most famous race as it has relieved the full-time teams of stretching resources to fill the field at 33 cars.
It has become harder to be that team, and it has become harder to be more than that team.
As comfortable as D&R has been showing up each May, there has been a desire to return to full-time competition for a few years now. The team last competed full-time in 2012. Despite the stated interest, we saw little more than what the team did in 2020, running at Iowa and all three races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. New investors didn't come in. There were not additional partners to bring the team back nor were any alliances signed for a full season.
With a tougher barrier for entry, D&R was forced to leap.
IndyCar's charter system has generated criticism because it is an antithesis of what motorsports have been. All it use to take was purchasing a car, showing up and you were eligible for all the same prizes as every other car on the grid. If you won, you got the most money. It doesn't work that way anymore, and soon a team will not be able to show up and race out of nowhere. If you want to race, it will cost you more than a chassis, engine and the other expenses tied to running a team. The spot on the grid comes at a price.
The goal isn't for a charter to be affordable. For all existing teams, they want that spot to be worth something. They want value. They want others to covet their spot on the grid, and if someone wants it, they will sell for the right price. That only makes it tougher for a team to enter, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing included. It only gets tougher if interest grows.
In 2026, not many others are looking to enter IndyCar. Dreyer & Reinbold Racing didn't enter a bidding war. If it had waited another year or two, it could have been priced out. The moment was now, and D&R had the money to satisfy RLLR. Racer Magazine's Marshall Pruett reported the charter sold for $13 million.
This set the bar for future charter transactions. The $13 million price tag is not set in stone, but it is the floor at the moment. No team is going to try and sell for less moving forward. That doesn't mean every suitor is immediately going to make the payment. This was the price Dreyer & Reinbold Racing was willing to pay, and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing wasn't a new team.
Despite what you may hear, this isn't the litmus test for interest in IndyCar. This is the equivalent of the Wood Brothers getting a charter in NASCAR after it was initially not awarded one because the Wood Brothers was not a full-time team the introduction of charters. Dreyer & Reinbold Racing has competed in a race every year of the 21st century. They had a foot in the door every year, and it has been working and doing business with the current competitors the entire time. The real test is still to come.
For RLLR, it probably got what it was asking for. It is not a transformational amount of money, but it is more than pennies-on-the-dollar. The charter didn't change hands for next-to-nothing, setting up future teams to face an uphill battle to generate any kind of revenue from a sale. There is still an unknown of what comes next. It is rare any teams are interested in IndyCar, and they are usually coming from somewhere else.
If you look at the "new teams" in IndyCar, Meyer Shank Racing spent almost 20 years in sports cars and then spent three seasons part-time in IndyCar; McLaren took over Schmidt Peterson Motorsports; Juncos Hollinger Racing had a cup of coffee in IndyCar and was a Road to Indy stalwart before becoming full-time. Even Prema and Carlin had decades of dominance in European junior series before entering IndyCar. The last team to form from nothing was Ed Carpenter Racing in 2012.
The past decade has shown there is curiosity in IndyCar. At least five have entered the series. Only three have stuck around. We could be a few years from truly finding out what a charter is worth. That second deal will say more than the first.
This deal is a positive even if the price cannot be treated as the true market value. A little over a month ago, I wrote about the passing of Dennis Reinbold and pondered this team's future. Race teams last as long as the owner wants them to. D&R co-owners, the DeBord family, has made it clear Dreyer & Reinbold Racing isn't done and it wants more. Even with a changing landscape and a greater hill to climb to make the grid, it did not deter the team from making a business decision to return to full-time competition.
It cost the team around $13 million, but it does mean D&R will get a greater share of the pie. They might not see it in year one, but it can compete for Leader Circle money. By the way, if this RLLR entry finishes in the Leader Circle spots at the end of the 2026 season, does Dreyer & Reinbold get that payout for 2027?). Winning the Indianapolis 500, which would already be a great payday, would not be the greatest possible payout for D&R as a chartered entry.
IndyCar loses its only Indianapolis 500-only entry, but it loses it because that team has become a full-time, chartered entry, the best possible outcome. The month of May entry list isn't suffering with this news, and D&R could still field a second car, as it has in recent years at Indianapolis. It is not a net-loss for the series and its most famous race. A team that has long invested in the series and done it out of passion has secured its future when it previously looked ominous.
Forget the first charter transaction in IndyCar history. The bigger story is Dreyer & Reinbold Racing are going to be around for every race in 2027. It is a win for everyone involved.
Winners From the Weekend
You know about Corey Heim, but did you know...
Lando Norris won the Hungarian Grand Prix, his first career victory.
Garbiele Mini (sprint) and Noel León (feature) split the Formula Two races from Hungary. Théophile Naël (sprint) and Freddie Slater (feature) split the Formula Three races.
Carson Kvapil won NASCAR Grand National Series race from Indianapolis, his first career victory. Layne Riggs won the Truck race from Indianapolis Raceway Park, his fifth victory of the season.
Thomas Preining and Mirko Bortolotti split the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters races from Oschersleben.
Dan Ticktum and Nyck de Vries split the Tokyo ePrix.
Coming Up This Weekend
IMSA has an endurance race from Road America, six hours around Elkhart Lake.
Super GT will be at Fuji.
Rally Finland returns.
Supercars head out to Perth.
GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup makes a trip to Magny-Cours.
