Fittipaldi Beats ‘Em in ‘89, Joins ‘Em in ’90 : Auto racing: He won a CART title with a Penske car. Now he combines with Penske drivers Rick Mears and Danny Sullivan on a super team.

There isn’t a race car driver alive who doesn’t want to be on a one-car team that wins a championship--or is at least a contender.

Emerson Fittipaldi was there last year, winning the Indianapolis 500 and the PPG Indy car championship for Pat Patrick and Chip Ganassi. So why is he smiling now at having joined a three-car team for the 1990 championship season starting Sunday with the Autoworks 200 at Phoenix International Raceway?

Fittipaldi, 42, is part of the Roger Penske super team that also includes former Indy 500 winners Rick Mears and Danny Sullivan.

“The No. 1 reason I switched was to stay competitive,” Fittipaldi said. “Patrick Racing was not going to have a new Penske car with a Chevrolet engine (which it did last year), and that was important to me. I want another competitive year; I want to win the championship again, and I knew I couldn’t continue in the same situation and have a chance.

“Penske was the best option. I have known Roger for more than 20 years, and I am very proud to be with him. He has the same will to win that I have, and I see no problems in working with Rick and Danny. In fact, I see it as a plus.”

Fittipaldi had a dream season in 1989, when he won the Indianapolis 500 in a memorable duel with Al Unser Jr., then went on to win Championship Auto Racing Teams races at Detroit, Portland, Cleveland and Nazareth, Pa., and the season championship. From Brazil, he became the first foreign-born driver to win the driving title since Mario Andretti won the last of his four in 1984.

During the year, Emmo, as he is known in racing, won a record $2,166,000 in 16 races. He became the first driver to win more than $1 million in a race, collecting $1,001,604 for the Indy 500. He was a unanimous choice as American driver of the year.

Last year, Fittipaldi drove a Penske PC-18 that Patrick had purchased from its namesake and beat the Penske team of Mears and Sullivan with its own car. However, there was no deal for a 1990 model--classified as a Penske Indy Chevrolet rather than a PC-19--meaning that if Fittipaldi had stayed with Ganassi-Patrick, he would have been stuck with a year-old car.

The situation was further muddled when Patrick, who had sold a majority interest in his team to Ganassi last year, decided to cast his lot with the new Alfa Romeo team that already had Roberto Guerrero as its driver. When Fittipaldi announced his decision to switch to Penske, it left Ganassi with a stable of year-old cars and no driver until he signed Eddie Cheever, who had quit Formula One after 10 seasons.

The big question going into the new year centers on Penske’s being able to keep three highly competitive and successful drivers happy for an entire season. Rarely in racing have three such high-profile drivers been together on the same team.

Fresh in everyone’s mind is the bitter feud on the McLaren Formula One team between world champions Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost that led to Prost leaving for Ferrari this year despite winning a world championship last year with McLaren.

In the mid-1970s, Parnelli Jones and Vel Miletich put together a team of Andretti, Al Unser and Joe Leonard--each of whom had been national champion--but it fell apart amid acrimony and jealousy among the drivers and crews.

“So far, in testing, having three drivers has worked out very well,” insists Fittipaldi. “We have had very positive results. All of us have had about the same amount of seat time in testing. Each driver sees things differently in different situations, and all that different feedback comes back to the team.

“The information is far more valuable than if it came from just one driver. Rick is a very good test driver, and his experience on the ovals is going to help me. And Danny is a very quick road circuit driver. It makes for a good combination. I think it can’t help but be good for me.”

Sullivan agreed. “So far, in testing, we all seem to accent one another,” he said. “If one of us finds something different with the car, it’s nice to have one of the other guys confirm it. It helps your confidence.

“Truthfully, it doesn’t seem much different to me because, as far as I’m concerned, I always felt we had a three-car team with Al (Unser). He never ran less than the three 500s and was with us a lot, so having Emmo around doesn’t make it seem like it’s any more crowded.

“The crunch might come if one of us isn’t getting the job done. We’re all selfish and none of us feels good about losing, even if it’s to a teammate.”

The 1990 Penske, which was the first new-model Indy car delivered to a CART team this year, has been thoroughly tested at Laguna Seca, Calif.; Phoenix; West Palm Beach, Fla.; Indianapolis, and Nazareth, Pa.

“I have close to 1,500 miles in the new car myself, which is more than I had for Patrick at this time last year,” Fittipaldi said. “All together, the car has about 3,500 miles. That is a lot of testing. It gives us a strong position for the start of the season.”

And what will happen when one of the three finds himself bringing up the rear? After all, only one can win, and none of the three will be happy with even second place.

“It is inevitable that things will work out where one of us will run good and one will not,” Fittipaldi said. “It has to happen that one day Rick will be unhappy, one day Danny will be unhappy and one day I will be unhappy. It’s always that way in racing, especially with drivers as competitive as we are, but I think both Rick and Danny have great personalities, and I think each of us will realize that our turn will come.”

Fittipaldi also has a theory about why he was able to beat the Penske drivers in their own car--a theory that he assuredly has passed along to Mr. Penske.

“When the Patrick team received the car last year, it was our decision to keep it standard, to drive it and test it without making any major modifications,” Fittipaldi said. “We wanted to get as much out of it as we could just the way it was.

“At Indianapolis, we hardly made a change the whole month. We changed the springs, the tire pressure and cambers, but that was it, and we beat them with their own car.

“The Penske team experimented with many different modifications. It took them quite a long time to get the car working the way they wanted it, but, if you remember, at the end of the season at Laguna Seca, Rick was on the pole, Danny was second-fastest and Rick dominated the whole race.”

The new car is only slightly different from the 1989 model, except in the areas mandated by rule changes. The changes were made in aerodynamics in an attempt to reduce speeds, which reached nearly 224 m.p.h. last year at Indianapolis.

“We are close to last year’s speeds despite the changes, but the rules have slowed the escalation of speed. If we ran with last year’s rules, we might be going 230,” Fittipaldi said.

“You can feel the difference in downforce. The car slides a little more and that makes it more difficult to drive than last year’s car. At Indy, there seems to be more drag on the straightaways, but the speeds are about the same in the corners.”

For Fittipaldi, the switch from Patrick to Penske meant leaving one old friend and reuniting with another. Morris (Mo) Nunn, who masterminded the championship season last year, moved with Patrick to Alfa Romeo.

“In the two years Mo Nunn was with the team, his input was tremendous,” Fittipaldi said. “My communication with Mo was perfect. His work was efficient and he was a very important part of the success of Patrick Racing.

“I am sorry it had to end, but with Penske I am glad to be working with Teddy Mayer again. Teddy was team manager for McLaren when I won my second world championship in 1974. I am hoping my relationship with Mo Nunn will be replaced by Teddy. Mayer is tremendous with the chassis and has so much experience.

“And when the races start, Teddy and I will be on our own. We will make our own decisions, and Rick and Danny will be no different from the other drivers. I want to do well at Phoenix because winning is like a snowball. After you do well, you want to do better the next time, and better the time after that, and so on. It is a tonic for the crew, the engineers, the sponsors, everyone.”

Almost anything will be better than what happened here last year. Fittipaldi crashed the new Penske PC-18 during practice and had to use an older backup car for both the Phoenix and Long Beach races. However, he made impressive showings in what was thought to be an obsolete car, finishing fifth here and third in Long Beach.

Fittipaldi is continually asked to compare winning the Indy car championship to winning the Formula One championship, which he did in 1972 with a Lotus-Ford and in 1974 with a McLaren-Ford.

“They are not comparable,” he said. “Each one of them is very important, very special. It is difficult to compare, they are so different.

“In CART, we run on four different type tracks, which is very demanding on the driver and the car. We run on a small oval (one-mile) like Phoenix, a street circuit like Long Beach, a road course like Laguna Seca and a big oval (2 1/2-miles) like Indianapolis. There is so much variety that you don’t have in Formula One. Perhaps that is why I might appreciate it more. On the other hand, it might be easier to appreciate winning when you are older.

“Today, I do not think of comparing past wins. My goal is to repeat my performance of last year. That is my challenge. There is always great pressure in trying to repeat, but I hope I can cope with that pressure this year. I have such a love for the sport, I welcome the pressure and the challenge.”