SOUTHSIDER VOICE PHOTOS BY AL STILLEY Eight members of Team Penske addressed the motor sports media during the annual Charlotte Motor Speedway media tour (from left): drivers Ryan Blaney, four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears, Joey Logano, Rusty Wallace, Brad Keselowski, Team Penske President Ted Cindric, Penske Corp. Executive Vice President Walter Czarnecki and team owner Roger Penske.
By Al Stilley
Senior staff writer
The celebration of 50 Years of Team Penske began at a dinner at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C., where employees and drivers – past and present – gathered to honor Roger Penske.
Team Penske began in 1966, a year after he turned down an Indianapolis 500 rookie test with car owner Clint Brawner, with the formation of Roger Penske Racing. Penske also retired then as a race car driver, a career that began in 1958 and included SCCA and USAC national road racing championships.
Several Penske-owned cars, including the winning Indianapolis 500 race cars driven by Mark Donohue and Rick Mears, were on display at the Hall of Fame. A display of Penske cars will be unveiled Friday afternoon at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
Penske’s stock cars on display feature the No. 02 Pontiac that he drove to victory in the NASCAR 250 at Riverside (Calif.) road course, the No. 2 Ford (nicknamed “Midnight”) driven by Rusty Wallace to seven Sprint Cup wins in 1993 and the No. 12 Alltel Dodge driven by South Bend’s Ryan Newman.
Team Penske has won 424 major races in 4,103 starts, 487 poles and 28 national championships while fielding 85 drivers. Donohue led the way with 59 wins, Brad Keselowski 44 and Wallace 37.
Penske has a record 16 Indianapolis 500 wins, which were signified with the display of the Borg-Warner Trophy as part of the dinner festivities last month.
Penske revolutionized Gasoline Alley upon his team’s arrival with crew cuts, all-white shirts, an immaculate garage and innovative air jacks. The starched white shirts weren’t Penske’s idea; that was the way they came back from the cleaners.
The immaculate look as part of the Penske Way continues today, according to Penske, who said, “It projects the image that we want to be, and that’s someone who has quality and can execute at the very top of their game.”
Key Sprint Cup dates
The Sprint Cup season begins with the Daytona 500 Sunday at 1 p.m. on Fox. The two qualifying races at 7 p.m. Thursday on Fox Sports 1 will set the lineup. The Camping World Truck Series race is Friday at 7 p.m., and the Xfinity Series race unfolds Saturday at 3:30 p.m., both on FS1.
The biggest stock car race in Indy, the Brickyard 400 is July 24.
Other Sprint Cup races in the Midwest are June 12 and Aug. 28 at Michigan International Speedway, July 9 at the repaved Kentucky Speedway and Sept. 18 at Chicagoland.
New Xfinity format
The Xfinity Series race at the IMS July 23 will have a different format in the hope of making it more entertaining and competitive.
The Lilly Diabetes 250 will consist of three races – two 40-lap heats to set the 40-car field for the 60-lap final race. The top two Xfinity drivers in each heat will be eligible for a $100,000 bonus, with the top finisher from those four in the 60-lap finale cashing in.
The Dash 4 Cash will be the fourth and final bonus during the 2016 series.
The series also will have its version of the Chase, beginning Sept. 24 at Kentucky Speedway with 12 drivers and two elimination rounds leading up to the final four drivers vying for the series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Only drivers who declare for the series, which eliminates declared Sprint Cup drivers, are eligible for the playoff and the cash bonuses.
Charter system
NASCAR rolled out its new charter system earlier this month, which assures team owners with formal input in the sanctioning body’s future decisions.
The charter affects 20 team owners and 36 cars for the next nine years, similar to NASCAR’s action to lock in five-year agreements with race tracks. Four non-charter cars will compete for lineup spots among 40-car fields.
Co-team owner Tony Stewart contends the pact positions the sport for growth and sustainability and is good for the sports overall health.
Critics contend the charter does nothing to cut costs, improve Sprint Cup racing or address ways to attract new car owners to the sport.
NASCAR’s move is a compromise that also allows the recently formed owners council to connect with sanctioning body executives and officials instead of acting as an outside activist group.
Brickyard champion
Kyle Busch is the defending Brickyard 400 champion and Sprint Cup champion, which has happened seven times, including Jeff Gordon, 1998, 2001; Dale Jarrett, 1999; Tony Stewart, 2005; and Jimmie Johnson, 2006, 2009.
Busch missed the first 11 Cup races last year after suffering a broken leg in a crash at Daytona. The Brickyard 400 was his ninth race back and his fourth win. He also won the Lilly Diabetes 250 a day earlier.
“It’s happened more times in history than many other tracks that the winner of the Brickyard has gone on to win the Cup championship,” Busch said during an interview at the Charlotte Motor Speedway media tour. “I looked that up after I won the race and I was baffled by that. Then I thought that I had better not mess this up. Being able to sweep the weekend at Indy was pretty special; to be able to score the Cup victory there was huge too.”
The challenge to repeat as the Cup championship team is not lost on team owner Joe Gibbs who coached the Washington Redskins to Super Bowl titles in 1982, ’87 and ’91. The closest Gibbs and the Redskins came to back-to-back wins came in 1983 when they lost to the Los Angeles Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII.
Gibbs knows how difficult it is to repeat a championship. Busch’s competition not only comes from other famous teams but teammates Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin.
“The hardest challenge is to stay up there (on top),” Gibbs said. “In pro sports when you have a great year, everybody else is pointing at you and looking at you; they’re working their rear ends off to get it back. If you kind of want to sit back and feel pretty good about yourself – that’s a disaster. We are ready to hit the ground running. The way we look at it as a team is only one of our drivers won the championship; we’ve got three others who didn’t. So they’re going to be trying harder.”
Sprint Cup rules
The success of NASCAR’s revised aerodynamics package last year at Kentucky Speedway and Darlington Raceway has led to similar rules for most Cup races this season, except “plate” races at Daytona and Talladega.
Most Cup drivers are in favor of less grip, and many of them want even more reduction in downforce. Here are some of their comments:
Carl Edwards: “The whole art of driving a race car is to be able to manage the car through the corner, get on the gas sooner, manage the braking, slide the car around – that’s what all of us have worked on all our entire lives. As you take more downforce and side force away and add horsepower, you put more of the racing in the driver’s hands. To me that’s what car racing is about. It’s not about putting your foot to the floor and steering an engineering experiment. It’s all about racing and manhandling the race car."
Brad Keselowski: “I’m thrilled with the package for the full season. It places the importance on the driver to navigate the cars (because) they will be harder to drive.”
Ryan Newman: “You’re going to be trying to recover as much downforce as you can. The driver will have less on-throttle time. The tires will have more grip (early) and fall off. It will be a challenge.”
Jimmie Johnson: “I like a car that moves around a lot; it’s a very comfortable vehicle for me to drive. I enjoy slipping around a lot. We’re going to be learning more and more, but we’re a little faster with this package.”
Senior staff writer
The celebration of 50 Years of Team Penske began at a dinner at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, N.C., where employees and drivers – past and present – gathered to honor Roger Penske.
Team Penske began in 1966, a year after he turned down an Indianapolis 500 rookie test with car owner Clint Brawner, with the formation of Roger Penske Racing. Penske also retired then as a race car driver, a career that began in 1958 and included SCCA and USAC national road racing championships.
Several Penske-owned cars, including the winning Indianapolis 500 race cars driven by Mark Donohue and Rick Mears, were on display at the Hall of Fame. A display of Penske cars will be unveiled Friday afternoon at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
Penske’s stock cars on display feature the No. 02 Pontiac that he drove to victory in the NASCAR 250 at Riverside (Calif.) road course, the No. 2 Ford (nicknamed “Midnight”) driven by Rusty Wallace to seven Sprint Cup wins in 1993 and the No. 12 Alltel Dodge driven by South Bend’s Ryan Newman.
Team Penske has won 424 major races in 4,103 starts, 487 poles and 28 national championships while fielding 85 drivers. Donohue led the way with 59 wins, Brad Keselowski 44 and Wallace 37.
Penske has a record 16 Indianapolis 500 wins, which were signified with the display of the Borg-Warner Trophy as part of the dinner festivities last month.
Penske revolutionized Gasoline Alley upon his team’s arrival with crew cuts, all-white shirts, an immaculate garage and innovative air jacks. The starched white shirts weren’t Penske’s idea; that was the way they came back from the cleaners.
The immaculate look as part of the Penske Way continues today, according to Penske, who said, “It projects the image that we want to be, and that’s someone who has quality and can execute at the very top of their game.”
Key Sprint Cup dates
The Sprint Cup season begins with the Daytona 500 Sunday at 1 p.m. on Fox. The two qualifying races at 7 p.m. Thursday on Fox Sports 1 will set the lineup. The Camping World Truck Series race is Friday at 7 p.m., and the Xfinity Series race unfolds Saturday at 3:30 p.m., both on FS1.
The biggest stock car race in Indy, the Brickyard 400 is July 24.
Other Sprint Cup races in the Midwest are June 12 and Aug. 28 at Michigan International Speedway, July 9 at the repaved Kentucky Speedway and Sept. 18 at Chicagoland.
New Xfinity format
The Xfinity Series race at the IMS July 23 will have a different format in the hope of making it more entertaining and competitive.
The Lilly Diabetes 250 will consist of three races – two 40-lap heats to set the 40-car field for the 60-lap final race. The top two Xfinity drivers in each heat will be eligible for a $100,000 bonus, with the top finisher from those four in the 60-lap finale cashing in.
The Dash 4 Cash will be the fourth and final bonus during the 2016 series.
The series also will have its version of the Chase, beginning Sept. 24 at Kentucky Speedway with 12 drivers and two elimination rounds leading up to the final four drivers vying for the series championship at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Only drivers who declare for the series, which eliminates declared Sprint Cup drivers, are eligible for the playoff and the cash bonuses.
Charter system
NASCAR rolled out its new charter system earlier this month, which assures team owners with formal input in the sanctioning body’s future decisions.
The charter affects 20 team owners and 36 cars for the next nine years, similar to NASCAR’s action to lock in five-year agreements with race tracks. Four non-charter cars will compete for lineup spots among 40-car fields.
Co-team owner Tony Stewart contends the pact positions the sport for growth and sustainability and is good for the sports overall health.
Critics contend the charter does nothing to cut costs, improve Sprint Cup racing or address ways to attract new car owners to the sport.
NASCAR’s move is a compromise that also allows the recently formed owners council to connect with sanctioning body executives and officials instead of acting as an outside activist group.
Brickyard champion
Kyle Busch is the defending Brickyard 400 champion and Sprint Cup champion, which has happened seven times, including Jeff Gordon, 1998, 2001; Dale Jarrett, 1999; Tony Stewart, 2005; and Jimmie Johnson, 2006, 2009.
Busch missed the first 11 Cup races last year after suffering a broken leg in a crash at Daytona. The Brickyard 400 was his ninth race back and his fourth win. He also won the Lilly Diabetes 250 a day earlier.
“It’s happened more times in history than many other tracks that the winner of the Brickyard has gone on to win the Cup championship,” Busch said during an interview at the Charlotte Motor Speedway media tour. “I looked that up after I won the race and I was baffled by that. Then I thought that I had better not mess this up. Being able to sweep the weekend at Indy was pretty special; to be able to score the Cup victory there was huge too.”
The challenge to repeat as the Cup championship team is not lost on team owner Joe Gibbs who coached the Washington Redskins to Super Bowl titles in 1982, ’87 and ’91. The closest Gibbs and the Redskins came to back-to-back wins came in 1983 when they lost to the Los Angeles Raiders in Super Bowl XVIII.
Gibbs knows how difficult it is to repeat a championship. Busch’s competition not only comes from other famous teams but teammates Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Denny Hamlin.
“The hardest challenge is to stay up there (on top),” Gibbs said. “In pro sports when you have a great year, everybody else is pointing at you and looking at you; they’re working their rear ends off to get it back. If you kind of want to sit back and feel pretty good about yourself – that’s a disaster. We are ready to hit the ground running. The way we look at it as a team is only one of our drivers won the championship; we’ve got three others who didn’t. So they’re going to be trying harder.”
Sprint Cup rules
The success of NASCAR’s revised aerodynamics package last year at Kentucky Speedway and Darlington Raceway has led to similar rules for most Cup races this season, except “plate” races at Daytona and Talladega.
Most Cup drivers are in favor of less grip, and many of them want even more reduction in downforce. Here are some of their comments:
Carl Edwards: “The whole art of driving a race car is to be able to manage the car through the corner, get on the gas sooner, manage the braking, slide the car around – that’s what all of us have worked on all our entire lives. As you take more downforce and side force away and add horsepower, you put more of the racing in the driver’s hands. To me that’s what car racing is about. It’s not about putting your foot to the floor and steering an engineering experiment. It’s all about racing and manhandling the race car."
Brad Keselowski: “I’m thrilled with the package for the full season. It places the importance on the driver to navigate the cars (because) they will be harder to drive.”
Ryan Newman: “You’re going to be trying to recover as much downforce as you can. The driver will have less on-throttle time. The tires will have more grip (early) and fall off. It will be a challenge.”
Jimmie Johnson: “I like a car that moves around a lot; it’s a very comfortable vehicle for me to drive. I enjoy slipping around a lot. We’re going to be learning more and more, but we’re a little faster with this package.”