INDIANAPOLIS — NASCAR has it. Should INDYCAR join? NASCAR firest started using charters in 2016. If you were a full-time team for 2013, 2014, 2015 and sat in a good position, you got one. The main caveat to this was that only four charters were allowed per organization. But, it was a massive thing to do because it franchised the teams.

It gave them something to recoup if they ever wanted out.

While it’s diminished the car count some in NASCAR, it also helped grow the bottom line of these teams though too. These 36 charters are coveted. With so many new teams trying to get into the sport, it’s helped drive up the cost and value of them.

From what started off as purchases of $5-$8 million has landed them to $20-million and now if reports are true, near or over $50-million for just one.

Chip Ganassi Racing wasn’t even for sale for crying out loud but he got a hefty offer from Justin Marks and Trackhouse a few years ago to buy him out. Other teams have sold charters to gain a massive payday too.

This is starting to allow teams to sign drivers based off talent and not how much money they bring. Between the charters and now possibly a bigger chunk of the TV money pie, NASCAR teams are in a good spot.

With that said, should INDYCAR do something similar?

INDYCAR racing is expensive too. While it’s not anywhere close to be as expensive as NASCAR is, having a charter could certainly help not only these teams grow financially, but for when they decide to eventually call it quits as well.

“I think I would certainly be up for exploring that, yes,” Ganassi told me. “It’s not necessarily about more teams. It’s more if you solidify the teams that you have — you have strong teams. I think one of the things that the charter system showed in NASCAR is it leveled the playing field a bit among the teams, which I think was sorely needed, and I think it would solidify some sort of, if you want to call them, teams that are further down the grid. It would solidify those from a financial point of view.”

Mike Hull agreed saying things have changed now.

“Let’s face it, financially they’ve changed, and so what the sanctioning body, the INDYCAR sanctioning body has done is they’ve done a good job of saving us from ourselves,” Hull said this past May.

“What you don’t see as journalists, what the people in the grandstands don’t see, is how hard we work underneath the body panels to make the cars better than the rest, within the rules.

“Yeah, when I started here as a young guy we came here with two cars per driver, enough manpower to be able to roll the cars back and forth to the practice area on a daily basis with different setups on them. You had at least three, maybe four engines manufacturers, two tire companies, three chassis companies, and the lights never went off in the garage area. We never went home. We’d go home at 3:00 in the morning, come back at 6:30 in the morning, go back to work.

“I don’t know today with human resources if we’d get away with that, quite frankly. It was fantastic. It was fantastic, but the reason was because we had terrific manufacturer and vendor support in those days, which included the financial side of it.

“I would love it if we could go back to that, but it’s probably not going to happen. If you look at this series, if you forecast this series down the road, I’ll make a prediction. Five years from today there’s going to be 10 teams with three cars each. There’s going to be 30 cars in the series that are well supported. That’s where it’s going.

“What’s going to happen then? By then we should have new cars. By then we should have three, maybe four engine manufacturers if Mr. Penske’s group do what they’re working to do. Hopefully we have a tire company still that will stay up with that.”

Imagine a scenario of allowing these teams to be franchised. I mean it’s not like they’re getting any younger.

AJ Foyt is 88. Roger Penske is 86. Bobby Rahal is 70. Dale Coyne is 69. Chip Ganassi is 65. Michael Andretti is about to turn 61. This is the old guard.

The next ones up are Mike Shank who is 57. Zak Brown is 51. Ed Carpenter is 42. Ricardo Juncos is still young.

While Foyt has Larry Foyt, Penske has Tim Cindric, who do the others have? I’m not saying they don’t have succession plans in place but maybe they sell a car off or two. Also, maybe current drivers get into the ownership roles. Helio Castroneves is. Graham Rahal has an interest. Do others?

The only issue is, I don’t know how you make charters work without guaranteeing Indy 500 starting spots and that’s a road I don’t know if you want to necessarily go down with this fan base. But, there’s probably a way this can still be done.

I mean the Leaders Circle is nice and all and I do think it’s a great storyline each season, but imagine if there were 25-26 charters. Does that help get other teams interesting in INDYCAR with a positive ROI?

I mean NASCAR had Michael Jordan, Pitbull and Floyd Mayweather all want in. INDYCAR needs to showcase that it’s cheaper to get in here in a vastly more competitive series with the star power of some fresh faces too. However, without a charter system and something to recoup if they want out, what’s their gain by jumping in?

You can maximize each organization gets 3 charters max. Sort of the way it is now in leaders circle. If you max out how many there are, maybe it helps others want in.