Tony George out?

Well, Robin Miller is at it again. He is reporting that Tony George has been ousted from the CEO position of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a board meeting late last night.

Apparently, Tony's siblings were upset with how much money he has spent the last few years in purses, cars, fees etc... is running the bank dry and they didn't want to be left with nothing. Understandable. However, personally, I could care less about the money at the moment. What I care about is what happens to the IRL?

Now that Tony George has lost control of IMS, this in no way can be a positive situation. IMS was a source of cash, a source of stability, and a source of tradition for the IRL over the last 12 and a bit years. When you think of the IRL, the first thing that comes to mind is Indy.

Now, I'm not saying that with Tony George out of power at IMS, the IRL will disapear from the Indianapolis, however, it doesn't make me comfortable that we don't have Tony George in power there anymore. If his siblings are upset with him spending so much money, could they in turn be upset with the IRL? I mean, if they really wanted to now, the Hulman-George family sans TG could really make things hard for the IRL.

And now that Tony doesn't have IMS to run anymore, he will probably take a more active role in the IRL's day-to-day business, and I'm not so sure I like that. I haven't been a fan of a lot of Tony George decisions. Now I'm not a TG hater like some people, I just don't nessicarily like his decisions all the time, but, I still don't think he is the right man for the job in the IRL.

I guess we are sort of stuck in limbo until all of this gets figured out in the near future hopefully. Most likely a press release will be put out to make it official amongst the media, and the IRL will have to put something out to explain what is happening and how this affects the ICS and FIL. Once that happens, I'll make sure to post it asap.

Edit: The story is now being reported as false by Tony George and Mari Hulman-George. They say there was a board meeting, but that the meeting was typical and TG's leadership was not discussed at all in the meeting. This is a very odd situation. We've had both Robin Miller from Speed and Bruce Martin from SI.com reporting Tony George's firing as truth.

Either both RM and BM were mis-informed or flat out lied (I'd pick the first one), or Tony George is not aware of either his lack of a job at IMS or his impending firing.

Pressdog made a good point on twitter though, people both reported unification prior to it happening, and denied it after it had happened.

And from 16thandGeorgetown, we have video of TG dismissing the claims.

Stay tooned, I'll update this as more becomes available.