07/04/2026
A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
For the Drivers and Teams of American Motorsports
When it becomes necessary for a team to dissolve the financial chains that bind it to the whims of others, a decent respect for the sport demands that they declare the causes which impel the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that every driver and every team is created with the right to compete; that this right is endowed not by a logo but by talent, sacrifice, and the will to win; and that among these rights are the freedom to race, the security to plan, and a career that does not end the moment a check fails to clear.
Whenever a funding model becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the drivers and teams to abolish it and to lay a new foundation for their future. Prudence dictates that a model long established should not be discarded lightly. But when a long train of broken seasons reduces the racer to a salesman and the athlete to a billboard, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw it off.
To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world:
It has made the fastest hostage to the best-funded, so races are decided in boardrooms before they are decided on the track.
It has ended promising careers not for a lack of speed, but for a lack of signatures.
It has forced drivers to spend the hours they owe their craft chasing decals and dinners instead.
It has tied an entire season to a single marketing budget - revocable at will, and without warning.
It has made loyalty a one-way road, demanding everything of the team and guaranteeing nothing.
It has treated the men and women who risk the most as the line item cut first.
It has kept the paddock dependent on forces that owe it no allegiance and share none of its love for the sport.
We, therefore, the founders of Speedway Venture Studio, do solemnly publish and declare that the drivers and teams of American motorsports are, and of right ought to be, free and independent of the tyranny of the single sponsor - absolved from funding that arrives without warning and departs without cause, and possessed of the right to a stable foundation, a durable income, and the freedom to do the one thing they were born to do: race.
To build it, we pledge a new model - ownership over dependency, community over charity, patient capital over fickle budgets, many partners over a single master. We do not ask permission to wait. We intend to build it.
And for the support of this Declaration, we mutually pledge to one another our resources, our reputations, and our relentless work.
Will Marotti, Founder
Joe Tripp, Board Member
Adam Andretti, Board Member
Rhonda Klch, Board Member
Brian McRae, Board Member
Erica Sietsma, Board Member
Rusty Kirk, Board Member
Wes Zirkle, Board Member
Brent Cox, Board Member
July 4, 2026 Speedway, Indiana
