Penske Racing Celebrates 50th Anniversary Of Racing In The Indianapolis 500

Penske Racing Celebrates 50th Anniversary Of Racing In The Indianapolis 500

INDIANAPOLIS - From Mark Donohue in 1969 to today鈥檚 lineup of Will Power, Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and every driver in between, Team Penske鈥檚 50thAnniversary at the Indianapolis 500 is a tremendous achievement to celebrate. When Penske Racing entered its first Indianapolis 500 in 1969, they stood out to the grease-stained and grizzled USAC crowd that inhabited Gasoline Alley at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They were the 鈥淐ollege Boys with crew cuts, starched shirts and polished wheels鈥?as team owner Roger Penske recalled. The team鈥檚 arrival transformed the culture of the Indianapolis 500. Penske brought innovation, sponsorship, engineering and a 鈥渂usiness-to-business鈥?background that increased the professionalism of the sport and the event. 鈥淲e did that in CAN-Am with Porsche and certainly in Trans-Am. We had a commitment to our sponsors so when we came to the Speedway, we wanted to represent them properly. You didn鈥檛 bring a company like Sun Oil Company without showing their brands and their colors and that is what we did.

鈥淭hat was an evolution. The equipment, the people, the discipline. 鈥淚t鈥檚 ironic that 50 years later, we will have 500 to 600 years of experience in our pits during this race. Mark Donohue won the team鈥檚 first Indy 500 in 1972. Rick Mears won all four of his Indy 500s with Penske. 鈥淭hirty-eight percent of the times we have entered this race, we have won,鈥?Penske said proudly. 鈥淲e鈥檝e had 18 poles, 17 wins and have won 17 Pit Stop contests. 鈥淢ore important, the stat that gets me the most is we have led over 11 total races - 2300-plus laps. Penske Racing has enjoyed success, more than failure. But one of its most epic failures occurred in 1995 when neither of the team鈥檚 two drivers - defending Indy 500 winner Al Unser, Jr. or two-time Indy winner Emerson Fittipaldi failed to make the 33-car starting lineup. It began a long departure for the team.

In 1996, Penske remained loyal to CART as its teams boycotted the Indianapolis 500 over the creation of the Indy Racing League. It was the first time Team Penske went 1-2 in the Indy 500 with a young Castroneves winning the race ahead of then-teammate and two-time CART champion Gil de Ferran. 鈥淧robably one of the biggest mistakes I鈥檝e ever made in racing was leaving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a few years,鈥?Penske said. 鈥淩acers have hard heads and I guess I had a pretty hard one on those days. 鈥淲e came back and won the race three years in a row and have never looked back. Donohue got Penske Racing its first Indianapolis 500 win in 1972. After that, he had to wait until Rick Mears won the 1979 Indy 500 before he could celebrate a second win at Indy. That started the team on its still ongoing incredible run.

Bobby Unser won in 1981, Mears in 1984, Danny Sullivan in 1984, Al Unser won his fourth Indy 500 in Penske car in 1987, Mears won again in 1988 and 1991 becoming a four-time Indy 500 winner. Juan Pablo Montoya returned Team Penske to Victory Lane in 2015 and Power got his first Indy 500 win, and the team鈥檚 17th, last year. 鈥淔rom that point on, with Nigel Bennett, we had a wind tunnel and those assets helped us. Ask Penske which is his favorite win, and he really can鈥檛 pick one. 鈥淭he first win and the last one, I guess are my two favorite,鈥?Penske quipped. 鈥淢aybe when you think about 1985 when Danny Sullivan spun and won that race, that鈥檚 one. And, winning with the Mercedes-Benz engine in 1994. Or, getting Sam Hornish, Jr. that win in 2006, that one stands out. 鈥淚f you look at the last five or six laps of that race on used tires, what Sam did was amazing. To beat Marco at the checkered flag was amazing. That was a big day for Sam and a big day for the team.