Everything Roger Penske touches turns to green, more or less. Or gold. Or silver—the color of the 18 Borg-Warner trophies he’s won and the surgical instruments that are emblematic of how he runs all his operations. The point is that “The Captain” is the Captain for a reason … and not because he’s a dimwitted dope of some sort who’s in the business of losing money, races, Supreme Court Justices and so forth and so on.

“Penske Perfect” is the term that has been bandied about the paddock for decades now, and I have seen it firsthand. It is alarming in its precision. The Penske garages, for example, look like goddamn operating rooms, all sterile and perfectly, mesmerizingly—almost impossibly—organized and shiny, ruthlessly well-oiled environments designed for maximum success. Most other garages look like the Weird Science house the morning after Gary and Wyatt’s party, with muddy motorcycles and missiles and bodies strewn about haphazardly. Those other garages don’t win races very often.

So when the stunning news broke this week of Penske straight-up buying IMS and the Series as a whole, the IndyCar community had the same distinct feeling: that everything will be done aggressively right moving forward. They will be done perfectly, so to speak. Penske-perfectly.

That does not mean that we in the DadBall community will not weigh in with our own opinions on the matter, because we most certainly ARE. We have our own demands for what needs changed and, more importantly, what doesn’t.

IMPROVEMENTS

An in-track sports book. Holy hell can you imagine that place on Race Day?!? Remove one of those stupid golf holes on the back straightaway taking up valuable real estate and build a tasteful, refined Mandalay Bay-like oasis of poor decisions and worse bets and proper Old Fashioneds. It would rake in $9.2 trillion, give or take. We are mostly broke and broken come Race Day anyway, it would be fun to go down swinging on a terrible Rahal-Chilton-Kimball midrace trifecta that will certainly not hit.

Fix the Race Day traffic. It is unclear how this can be done, frankly. But this is Roger Penske’s place now, and traffic causes delays … delays lead to imperfections. Any sort of imperfection will not stand in Penske’s spotless world. We are demanding he make 30th Street a 48-lane highway and turn all of Crawfordsville Road into a Japanese bullet train. This does not seem unreasonable.

A well-known, top-shelf brand for the IndyCar Series sponsor. Not Pep Boys. Not Izod. Not Big-K Soda or McDowell’s Restaurant or any other sixth-tier knockoffs. Not TNT Fax Machines or whatever it is now. Perception is tearing away at reality here, and the reality is this: IndyCar racing is, pound-for-pound, the best auto racing in the world. The “Manny’s Pool Supply IndyCar Series” takes away from that fact dramatically. Penske needs to call in a favor or two and purchase Rolex or Apple or what have you and start the re-branding process. The Air Jordan IndyCar Series™ has a nice ring to it.

NO CHANGE NECESSARY