PENSKE, Roger S.

(b. 20 February 1937 in Shaker Heights, Ohio), accomplished business executive whose auto-racing team won numerous championships and races, including the Indianapolis 500.

Penske was raised in Shaker Heights, the son of Martha and Jay Penske, a corporate executive who taught his son the value of hard work. Penske was a prize-winning newspaper carrier and, as a teenager, bought and fixed used cars to sell at a profit. In 1951 he attended his first Indianapolis 500. Not long after, he severely injured his ankle while riding a motorcycle and nearly had to have his foot amputated, but recovered to play high school football. Penske graduated from Lehigh University in 1959 with a business administration degree. Beginning his career in aluminum sales, he later used a loan from his father to purchase a Chevrolet dealership in Philadelphia that spawned various transportation businesses. But as successful as Penske became in the corporate world, auto racing would be his claim to fame.

Penske drove in his first sports car race in 1958 and won his first race a year later. By 1962 he had earned Driver of the Year honors from Sports Illustrated and the New York Times. But after winning races in several classifications and a road racing championship, Penske retired from driving in 1965, since it began to conflict with his business career. "I don't want to be known as a race driver," he reportedly said before quitting.

With Mark Donohue as his driver, Penske started running his own race team in 1966. The team quickly succeeded at several levels of racing and hit the jackpot when Donohue won the Indianapolis 500 in 1972. Donohue died in 1975 after crashing during a practice run for a Formula One race, and Team Penske soon began focusing almost entirely on Indianapolis-style "Champ Car" racing.

Nicknamed the "Captain," Penske developed a reputation as the unquestioned leader of his team. In 1975 he met and offered Tom Sneva a chance to drive his Norton-sponsored car. "Roger told me what he wanted, and I told him what I wanted," recalled Sneva in The Norton Spirit (1978). "The result was simple. We did what he wanted." In 1977 and 1978 the duo broke the 200-mile-per-hour barrier at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and teamed for consecutive season championships. But Penske let Sneva go because he failed to win enough races. It wouldn't be the last time Penske parted with a successful driver.

One driver who did stay with Penske for the long haul was Rick Mears. Known as the "King of the Ovals," Mears won the Indianapolis 500 for Penske in 1979 and repeated the feat in 1984, 1988, and 1991. In all, he won twenty-nine races and three season championships for Penske before retiring from driving in 1992 to become a team consultant. "I couldn't have hoped for or dreamed of having a better career," said Mears. "And for that I have to thank Roger and the team."

Several drivers benefited from Penske's winning touch. Bobby Unser won the Indianapolis 500 in 1981, and his brother Al did likewise in 1987 with a year-old car that was being displayed in a hotel. Al Unser also captured the 1983 and 1985 season titles. Danny Sullivan took the 1985 Indianapolis 500 and 1988 season championship. Emerson Fittipaldi won at Indianapolis in 1993.

Undoubtedly, Penske Racing's greatest year was 1994. Following in the footsteps of his father and his Uncle Bobby, Al Unser, Jr., joined the team as a driver. Unser, Jr., Fittipaldi, and Paul Tracy combined to win twelve races, with Unser winning eight en route to the season title. Penske's trio of Marlboro-sponsored cars finished one-two-three in five separate races. Yet the year's top achievement was Unser's Indianapolis 500 triumph with a Mercedes push-rod engine that was secretly built and tested. "It was a whole team effort by Marlboro Team Penske that helped me win," said Unser. "That included the Mercedes-Benz engine which Roger himself saw in the rulebook would be an advantage." The motor was so dominant it was banned from competition after one race.

In 1995 Penske's cars did not even qualify at Indianapolis. The exclusive Penske chassis did not work well at many tracks. The team failed to win a race in 1996, and after Tracy won three straight races in the spring of 1997 to bring Penske's Champ Car victory total to ninety-nine, the team again went winless for the rest of that year and all of 1998 and 1999 as well. Making things worse was that the team was no longer racing at Indianapolis, as a split between Championship Auto Racing Teams (known as CART, which Penske cofounded in 1979) and the new Indy Racing League divided the sport.

After three years without a victory, Penske scrapped his own chassis in favor of a Reynard, and new driver Gil de Ferran finally gave him his 100th Champ Car win at Nazareth Speedway on 27 May 2000. The subsequent fall, de Ferran set the world closed-course speed record of 241.428 miles per hour at California Speedway and captured Penske's tenth season championship.

In May 2001 the team raced at Indianapolis for the first time in seven years, and Helio Castroneves won Penske Racing's eleventh Indianapolis 500. With de Ferran coming in second, the team achieved its first ever one-two finish at the Brickyard. "It kind of takes away the pain of 1995," said Penske afterward. Penske also won his eleventh season championship in 2001 when de Ferran clinched his second consecutive title. "I'm a very fortunate person to be driving for a guy like Roger and a team like we have," stated de Ferran. "To me, I've been living in a dream since I joined the team two years ago."

Penske was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1998. Along with his Champ Car team, he has run a National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) racing team and various speedways.

Penske and his wife, Kathryn, are the parents of two sons and a daughter. He has two sons from a previous marriage to Lissa Stouffer.

Away from the racetrack, Penske founded the Penske Corporation, including Penske Truck Leasing, Penske Auto Centers, and several other subsidiaries. Annual revenue has been estimated to be in the billions of dollars. Penske has also served as a director of the Detroit Diesel Corporation and General Electric Company.

A comprehensive profile of Penske appears in Automotive News (17 Jan. 2000). Some information can be found in The Norton Spirit: 1978 Racing with the Champion (1978). Other quotes and facts can be found in articles by Gordon Kirby, which are printed in various race day programs. Up-to-date information on Penske's career is available at http://www.penskeracing.com and http://www.cart.com.

Jack Styczynski