Celebrating 50 years as Team Penske

When he was 14, Roger Penske saw his first Indianapolis 500 with his father. After sitting in a race car at a house party, Penske decided that he wanted to be a race car driver. He was given an opportunity to take the IMS rookie test in 1965 by Clint Brawner. Busy with his new Philadelphia automobile dealership, he declined the offer. Brawner then offered the opportunity to Mario Andretti. Penske formed his race team the next year as a sports car team.  
 
During its first fifty years of racing Team Penske has won 420 major races including sixteen Indianapolis 500s and two Daytona 500s. They also had won 28 national championships across open-wheel, stock car and sports car racing.
 
The golden jubilee year started with a celebratory dinner in Charlotte for 1,200 people at the Charlotte Convention Center. The stage was bracketed by Mark Donohue’s 1972 Indianapolis 500 car on the left-hand side of the stage and Brad Keselowski’s 2012 Sprint Cup championship car on the right-hand side of the stage. Forty-three former Penske drivers, including most of the 500 winners, were in attendance and they saw a video tribute voiced by Tom Brokaw.
 
The celebration continued with a special exhibit at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame Museum. Penske arranged for the first car for each Team Penske driver to win the Indianapolis 500 to be brought in from the Penske Racing Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona. Winning cars displayed included Mark Donohue in 1972, Rick Mears in 1971, Bobby Unser in 1981, Danny Sullivan in 1985, Al Unser in 1987, Emerson Fittipaldi in 1993, Al Unser, Jr, in 1994, Helio Castroneves in 1991, Gil de Ferran in 2003, and Sam Hornish, Jr. in 2006. Penske referred to each of the cars as his “Jewels.” Also on display was Juan Pablo Montoya’s 2015 Indianapolis 500 car and Joey Logano’s 2015 Daytona 500 car. The two most successful Penske drivers, Rick Mears and Helio Castroneves, were there on opening day of the display to present them.
 
The exhibit also included the helmets of the Penske drivers who won the Indianapolis 500 exhibited in a glass case.
 
In a special photo shoot, Mears held up four fingers with one finger representing each Indianapolis 500. In a tease to the upcoming 2016 Indianapolis 500, Castroneves held up three fingers on one hand and one finger on the other.
 
There was also a markup of Penske’s 1969 garage bay on Gasoline Alley. Looking at Donohue’s McLaren M16B in which Penske won his first Indianapolis 500 in 1972, Penske told one of the Museum employees that somebody from his organization would buff the cars each day. He explained, “I want our organization, whether it’s a dealership, whether it’s a car, to be the best that people can see.  You’re as good as you look to a certain extent, that you have to have something beyond that, a foundation. I’m a detail guy.”
 
Wanting to instill a sense of pride in his organization, Penske had 53,000 copies of a 36-page special brochure for the exhibit detailing the exhibit printed for distribution to his employees along with a letter from him. He said, “Everybody in the company gets one, to see what we do as a team.”
 
Penske, who was one of the few 500 legends who had not driven the pace car for the Indianapolis 500, was selected to drive the pace car for the one hundredth running of the Indianapolis 500. In a tease to who would drive the pace car, IMS said “We’re very excited about our Chevrolet pace car driver for the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil. It is critical to IMS and our fans that the pace car driver for the Indianapolis 500 represent the importance of this event and understand what it means to be leading the field to the green for the 100th time.”
 
Penske was being watched by several dozen employees of Chevrolet and IMS when he stepped into the 2016 Camaro pace car and drove onto the track for a practice session with IMS president Doug Boles in the passenger seat. They circled the track between 90 and 120 mph before Penske stopped the car near the yard of bricks. Boles comment about Penske’s driving “What struck me was just how totally serious and focused he was.”
 
The year also marked the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. Firestone unveiled a commemorative racing tire which included the name of all 66 Indianapolis 500 winners who drove to victory on Firestones.  Firestone made 5000 tires for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway competition.
 
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