Team Penske

Team Penske

Team Penske (formerly Penske Racing) is the automobile racing team of the American entrepreneur Roger Penske . The team has been competing in a wide variety of racing classes since 1967.

Indy Racing League / Indy Car

Penske PC-22, 1993 Indianapolis 500 winner

Will Power in DW12, 2012

Team Penske contested their first Indy Car races in 1968 with driver Mark Donohue in an Eagle. The first start at the Indianapolis 500 took place in 1969. Three years later, in 1972, Mark Donohue took Penske's first victory in the famous 500-mile race.

The most successful season so far for Penske in this racing series was 1994, when with the Ilmor engine and the drivers Al Unser jr. , Paul Tracy and Emerson Fittipaldi could win twelve of 16 races.

Penske drivers have won the Indianapolis 500 15 times and an Indy Car championship 13 times.

In 1978 Roger Penske founded the racing organization CART together with other team owners such as Pat Patrick and Dan Gurney .

Four vehicles are currently used in the IndyCar Series , driven by Helio Castroneves , Will Power , Simon Pagenaud and Josef Newgarden .

Indy 500 winner with Penske Racing

1972 Mark Donohue 1979 Rick Mears 1981 Bobby Unser 1984 Rick Mears 1985 Danny Sullivan 1987 Al our 1988 Rick Mears 1991 Rick Mears

1993 Emerson Fittipaldi 1994 Al our jr. 2001 Helio Castroneves 2002 Helio Castroneves 2003 Gil de Ferran 2006 Sam Hornish Jr. 2009 Helio Castroneves 2015 Juan Pablo Montoya 2018 Will power

NASCAR

Logano's NASCAR Cup Series vehicle is being prepared for a race

1972 Penske Racing competed with Mark Donohue at the Riverside International Raceway for the first time in NASCAR . This was followed by only sporadic appearances in this championship for a few years until Bobby Allison contested a full season for the first time in 1976 and finished fourth. In 1980 the team retired from NASCAR for eleven years and came back with Rusty Wallace in 1991. Wallace won 37 races for Penske by his retirement in 2005, but not the title.

In 1998 Mike Kranefuss merged NASCAR team with Penske Racing. The driver of the car with the number 12 was Jeremy Mayfield . In 2000, Penske took over the car completely from Kranefuss and replaced Mayfield in 2001 with Mike Wallace , Rusty's younger brother. At the beginning of the 2002 season, Ryan Newman took over the cockpit. Newman won the prestigious Daytona 500 for Penske in 2008 . At the end of the 2008 season he left the team. Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski , who won the championship in 2012, currently drive for Penske in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series . A car with the starting number 22 is used in the NASCAR Xfinity Series , which is driven alternately by Logano, Keselowski and Ryan Blaney . In addition, the Wood Brothers Racing Cup Series team will receive technical support from Penske.

Trans-Am

1967 Penske Racing started with a Chevrolet Camaro and Mark Donohue at the wheel for the first time in the Trans-Am series. Later they switched to an AMC Javelin, with which the championship could be won.

CanAm

A Porsche 917/30 in the Porsche Museum

From 1972 to 1974 Penske was the official partner of Porsche in the CanAm series. In 1972 George Follmer and in 1973 Mark Donohue won the championship with a Porsche 917 . After a rule change, Penske only contested one race in 1974 and then retired.

Endurance racing

Penske Racing won the Daytona 24 Hours in 1969 with a Lola T70 Mk IIIb . In 1971 Penske used a Ferrari 512M that he had developed himself in the endurance races of Sebring , Daytona and Le Mans .

ALMS

Both Penske Porsche RS Spyder 2008 in Long Beach

In the last race of the 2005 season at Laguna Seca , Penske Racing made its debut with a Porsche RS Spyder and the drivers Sascha Maassen and Lucas Luhr with a victory in the LMP2 class of the American Le Mans Series . From 2006 to 2008 Penske used two Spyder each in this series. In 2006 Maassen and Luhr won the drivers' championship in the LMP2 class, while the title in 2007 and 2008 went to team mates Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas .

formula 1

Main article: Penske Racing (Formula 1)

Penske Racing was also active with a team in Formula 1 from 1974 to 1976 . Apart from a victory at the Austrian Grand Prix in 1976, however, there weren't many successes to record. In 1977 Günter Schmid bought the team and used the Penske chassis for his new ATS team in the first year of operation .

Results

Victories in the sports car world championship

year	run	vehicle	Driver 1	Driver 2
1969	Daytona 24 hour race	Lola T70 Mk.IIIB	Mark Donohue	Chuck Parsons

Web links

Commons : Penske Racing  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Official Penske Racing website (English)
• Penske Racing Museum (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Successes in the sports car world championship 1969 ( Memento from June 24, 2003 in the web archive archive.today )