Mr. Clean Has Cleaned Up in the Indy 500

The thing about Roger Penske is, he brought a revolution to the venerable Brickyard, citadel of American auto racing.

Oh, not the rear engine. Dan Gurney and Colin Chapman and Jack Brabham did that. Not the turbo-charge, the offset power plant, or any other innovations although Penske brought several of those, too.

What he basically brought to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway here is neatness, orderliness, cleanliness.

B.P., or before Penske, you could always tell a Gasoline Alley garage. It looked like the scene of a three-car head-on crash, or the aftermath of a World II tank battle. Mechanics were not only under a car, they were under a half-ton or so of debris. Spark plugs, fenders, wheel-mounts, pliers, wrenches, tailpipes were afloat on a sea of grease. Spare parts were strewn about like confetti.

Penske’s look as if they are getting ready for a heart operation. The cars look as if they have just been lifted out of a hatbox. You can’t eat off the floor, but you can walk barefoot on it. Crew chiefs and engine men look as if they are on their way to a dance.

They say if Penske finds a fly on his car, he’ll get another one. Penske cars make four pit stops, three for fuel and one for a car wash. If a bug hits the windshield, they call it in. It’s a surprise they don’t make the chauffeurs change jump suits every 100 miles. Penske could not only win Indy, he could win a Concours d’Elegance. His cars are in the mint condition you might find a 1933 Cord. Roger himself stands at the pit wall the whole race without getting his hair mussed or his voice raised. Even his custom loafers stay shined. Roger looks as if he had an important date right after he got through with this (ugh!) messy race business. You half expect him to show up in a tuxedo or to send his cars out in hair ribbons.

Gasoline Alley thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen when Penske and his housemaids showed up in the garages. “Do you do windows, too?” they taunted. And doubled up in laughter. “Hey, Penske, you got a scratch on the fender. Fire somebody.”

Not only were his cars clean, his drivers were, too. Not refugees from a lube rack, rich boys from Long Island, the Ivy League. “What’s he think this is--polo?” they jeered.

Then, they dropped the green flag and all they saw of Penske was this nice clean tailpipe. They say that Penske after 300 miles would be sweeping out Victory Lane. Penske’s team was the New York Yankees or Notre Dame of auto racing. Penske was Rockne. Cleanliness was next to Godliness on a race track, too.

Indy was Penske’s Alley. He won the pole and the race with irritating regularity. If you wanted to win the race, you had to get past Penske.

You also had to go to England to find out how. This race used to be as American as a hot fudge sundae. The cars used to come out of a garage in Torrance, the power plants out of a machine shop in South Bend or off a chain at the River Rouge.

But, nobody buys American anymore, least of all these motorists at Indy. The grid at Indy of recent years has been as British as a monocle, the last outpost of the Empire. Paul Revere would have taken to horse. The British are not coming, they’re here. Good old American know-how has become no-how.

But Penske not only wanted clean cars, he wanted American cars. It’s a kind of disgrace this most American of sporting events should be taken over by a bunch of guys who sound like Ronald Colman. There will always be an England, but we thought we kicked them out of Indiana 200 years ago. You begin to wonder what’s the use of winning wars?

The Brits began to take this thing over when the Lotuses showed up in 1963 and ran the old front-engined Offenhausers into the automotive dinosaurs’ graveyard. Pretty soon, the whole field was arriving by boat from the drawing boards and cottage industries of the mother country. Indianapolis became a crown colony. What was needed was another Boston Tea Party. We had to dump not orange pekoe but Cosworth engines into the harbor--or at least into the Wabash.

Roger Penske, a U.S. conglomerate, decided to re-hang the lanterns in this old North Church, so to speak. He went to Detroit, where 4 of 5 cars worldwide used to come from. How would General Motors like to shape up a new Declaration of Independence, reclaim the colonies?

So far, he has reclaimed the front row at Indy. That’s about 500 miles from reclaiming the race. “I told them it wasn’t enough to have the pace car at Indy if the race was going to be won by a Porsche or Honda or some other competitor.” Bad enough to be losing the interstate freeways to them without losing the speedway, too.

Detroit had largely pulled out of motor racing in the days when it could sell all the cars it could make and safety was a bigger factor than performance and it was not considered a sales pitch to have a pile of burning metal with a General Motors logo on it.

Penske has not entirely turned back the redcoats. The founding fathers can’t rest easy yet. The chassis on the cars is a “Penske 17,” but it is refined by the Briton, Nigel Bennett, who has spent most of his time designing the English-bred Lola racing machine. Penske’s partner is General Motors, the engine is Chevrolet, but half of the action is still held by the English, corporation, Ilmor (shorthand for England’s Mario Ilien and Paul Morgan).

So, the Penske challenge comes into focus wearing a bowler hat and brolly and a pair of blue jeans and cowboy boots. It’s not exactly Valley Forge, but it’s the closest thing to a Yankee Doodle Dandy this old race track has seen in some time. If his car wins, it’ll be only half-American. But you can be sure it’ll be all clean.