Book Review: Mark Donohue, Technical Excellence at Speed

This book chronicles the life of Mark Donohue, the race car driver who along with Roger Penske started what has become Team Penske. Despite having suffered from polio as a child, Donohue had a remarkable career, winning 119 of the 311 races he entered (38%). The vast majority of these races were sponsored by the Sports Car Club of America. He started racing in 1960 after completing the SCCA Drivers School in his own Elva Courier and later he drove for Carroll Shelby. His association with Penske started in 1966 on a part-time basis.
 
With a degree in engineering from Brown University, he is primarily known as an outstanding engineering talent who had an intuitive feel for the race car. He would not only set the car up for the race but could tell others what needed attention during the race. While he was an excellent engineer, he was also among the best drivers of his era. What is sad about Donohue is that he never realized what a great driver he was.
 
While at Team Penske, Donohue and Penske established new standards for automobile racing. At an SCCA race in 1968, they wanted to improve the gas mileage as it could eliminate one pitstop. Expanding the 22-gallon fuel cell wasn’t possible. Sunoco engineer Jerry Kroninger knew that if they could increase the density of the gasoline, then they could effectively have more fuel for the car and eliminate a pit stop. The solution? Kroninger put a 30-gallon can of gasoline inside of a 55-gallon drum and then added dry ice to cool the gasoline. By reducing the ambient temperature from 70 degrees Fahrenheit to 0, they effectively put 23 gallons of gasoline in the 22-gallon tank creating what Donohue called “the unfair advantage.”
 
In May 1969, Donohue was at Michigan International Speedway for a SCCA race. Kroninger designed and built a fueling rig which was 20 feet above the Penske pit. The purpose of the taller fueling rig was to decrease the time for a fueling stop. They had read the rules and knew the fueling rig was in compliance. While the SCCA allowed them to use the fueling rig for the race, the next day had the rules changed to so that a fueling rig could be no higher than six feet from the ground to the base.
 
One very well-known item was that when they arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May 1969, they were two crew cut Ivy League men whose garage was spit polished clean which was not the case in other garages. Pretty soon, other teams started following their example.
 
Donohue also had the reputation for being a practical jokester. Early in his racing career, he had what he called the “Scaglietti Smoker,” a 1954 Chevrolet station wagon which he used to tow his race car. He and a friend rigged a reservoir of diesel fuel that could be deployed through the exhaust. For drivers who were following too close with bright lights on, they often found they were enveloped in a black cloud of oily smoke.
 
Johnny Rutherford was at a dinner in Daytona Beach where Donohue greeted him warmly and slapped him on the back. When Rutherford returned to his hotel room that evening, he discovered that Donohue had slapped a Penske Racing sticker to his new Neiman-Marcus leather jacket.
 
As Penske Racing expanded, Donohue did the development work on the cars not only for himself but also for his teammates. Additionally, the team was involved in multiple racing series simultaneously. When he first started racing for Penske, he was based in Long Island. When the team moved to Newton Square, Pennsylvania, he moved his family to a nearby town with the thought that he would be able to spend more of his time with his family. This was not to be. As his responsibilities both in terms of car preparation and driving increased, he spent more and more time at the shop away from his family. He never could tell Penske that he needed to cut back on his responsibilities and wanted to primarily be a driver. As a result, he experienced burnout which ultimately caused him to move out of the family home shortly before he won Penske’s first Indianapolis 500. He was adrift and not sure what he wanted.
 
Retiring at the end of the 1972 season, he was promoted to general manager of Penske Racing. He was miserable and missed being in the race car. When the decision was made to join Formula One in 1974, he was the one to set up the car…and after telling Penske that he wanted to drive in the series became the driver for the team. In 1975, while participating in pre-race warm up laps, he was killed at the Austrian Grand Prix. He never realized what a wonderful racer he was or how highly respected he was by teammates, fellow drivers and fans.
 
Argetsinger has crafted a wonderful book. He interviewed friends and others who knew Donohue and had access to more than 60 hours of recordings which Donohue had done for his autobiography, The Unfair Advantage, cowritten with Paul Van Valkenburgh. Argetsinger’s book gives a lot of detail about racing, particularly in the SCCA between 1960 and 1973. A word of warning. The book is a lot longer than its 302 pages would initially indicate. The book is slightly oversized and the publisher has two columns per page. Despite the length, it is well worth the read.