Hold Your Horsepower, Don’t Blame the Winner

One of the aftermaths of the 78th Indianapolis 500 is something I find distressing and can only refer to as “Roger bashing.”

It goes like this: Break up Roger Penske or his team. Hogtie him with rules. Make him tee it up next year in a stock ’54 DeSoto. Ban him. Exile him. Get a restraining order against his getting within 25 miles of Indianapolis in May. Hold him in custody.

What did he do? He won his 10th Indy 500 in 26 years and his third in the last four. He got the best drivers in the world and put them in the best cars.

Wait a minute! Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? I thought that was the whole idea of the race. I thought that was the whole idea of sport.

So, why should we send Penske to Elba?

They say he has an unfair advantage. Well, what?

Well, he hooked up with Mercedes-Benz and Ilmor Engineering and produced an engine that was clearly faster than the competition. Well, so he did. So he has always done. So what?

He did that as far back as 1972 with a four-cylinder Offenhauser engine. He did that several times subsequently with Cosworth Fords. Then he did it with V-8 Chevies. Now, he does it with Mercedes.

Well, in the news conferences after the race you would have thought he had performed grand larceny.

“What about Michael Andretti saying your cars had 200 more horsepower in the straights?” he was asked accusingly in tones usually reserved for kidnaping suspects. An “All right, Joe, what did you do with the baby?” tone of voice.

So? Whose fault is it he had more horsepower? Well, they said resentfully, he took advantage of a loophole in the rules.

Hey! Why didn’t those other guys? Penske didn’t write the rules. He simply read them.

Well, he had the might of Mercedes behind him. Well, OK. But, if it was that easy, why didn’t Rolls-Royce do it? Honda did try it. It not only couldn’t get a car on the pole or in Victory Lane, it couldn’t get one in the race.

Let me tell you something about Roger Penske: In the preparation for the Gulf War three years ago, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf consulted him on vehicular problems for Operation Desert Storm. Does that tell you something about him?

Many years ago when Ben Hogan was dominating the game of golf, a rival, Mike Souchak, once observed ruefully, “Ben Hogan just knows something about hitting a golf ball the rest of us don’t know.” Same with Roger Penske and automobiles.

Consider his record. If you check the accomplishments of a lot of guys in Penske’s position--which essentially is that of coach or manager--you find that they had the advantage of a field leader. You will note the former Pittsburgh Steeler coach, Chuck Noll, got to four Super Bowls--all with the same quarterback, Terry Bradshaw. Tom Landry was most successful when he had Roger Staubach, Bill Walsh with Joe Montana. John McGraw was a great manager--when he had Christy Mathewson. Miller Huggins had Ruth and Gehrig.

When the constant is the coach, you know you are dealing with genius. When Roger Penske first went to the Speedway, he had Mark Donohue, a sports car driver. On their fourth try, they won. Penske later hooked up with Rick Mears. And he won four times at Indy with him.

Roger won with Bobby Unser. Then, Danny Sullivan. Then Al Unser. Then Emerson Fittipaldi. Last Sunday, he won with Al Unser Jr. Four different engines, seven different drivers. Two generations of Unsers.

That is awesome. Dynasty stuff. The chauffeurs didn’t seem to make all that difference. When Fittipaldi crashed last Sunday with 15 laps to go, his teammate, Little Al, was running right behind him.

Years ago, the carpers used to shout, “Break up the Yankees!” They didn’t. They copied them.

They complained about Rockne and Notre Dame. In horse racing, they picked on Calumet Farms.

What were the Yankees supposed to do? Swap franchises with the St. Louis Browns? What was Notre Dame supposed to do? Get in the Mid-American Conference?

That’s not the American way. You don’t penalize excellence, you emulate it.

It’s expensive? Hey! Where could Mercedes get that kind of publicity, advertising? How many millions of dollars would it have to spend to get the kind of exposure winning the world’s most important race brings it?

Detroit turned its back on Indy racing years ago. The activists--who would be the only ones having any fun if they were able to remake the world the way they want it--had bullied them into thinking any association with speed would detract from their campaign for safety.

As if safety ever sold a single car. “My air bags are better than your air bags,” is not the stuff of legend. “My car won Indianapolis,” is.

In the military, a guy with this much edge in smarts over his adversary is known as “the Swamp Fox,” or “the Desert Fox” or “the Iron Chancellor” or some such.

At Indy, Penske is peerless. But they call him to task. They mutter darkly about changing the rules. He beats them at their own game. He should be “the Wizard of the Wabash.”

It didn’t used to be a sin to win in this country.