ONE-CAR SHOW

Mired in the worst slump of his career, Roger Penske is reaching back nearly three decades for a solution.

Bucking the trend of two-car operations, CART’s best-known team owner will run just one this season. All of Marlboro Team Penske’s effort in 1999 will be aimed at returning Al Unser Jr. to the fast lane.

“I think a one-car effort will be good for us,” Penske said before the season-opening Marlboro Grand Prix on Sunday in Homestead. “It gives us a chance to refocus our organization.”

No team has come close to Penske’s record of nine championships in American racing’s top open-wheel division. Team Penske was entirely dominant in the late 1970s and for most of the ‘80s, winning eight of its titles in a 12-year span from 1977 through 1988.

Even as recently as 1994, Unser tied Michael Andretti’s record of eight wins in a season and cruised to the CART championship.

But the past three seasons have brought mostly frustration. Team Penske had only three wins, all by Paul Tracy in 1997. Unser had 12 wins in his first two seasons with the team, none in the past three.

“We’re very desperate,” Unser said. “We’re needing a win very bad. For Roger, for Marlboro, for everybody. The crew guys haven’t won in a long time.”

Last season was particularly taxing. Working with a new Mercedes engine, the Penske duo of Unser and Andre Ribeiro struggled to compete. The pair combined for just four top-five finishes--all by Unser--whose best effort was second in Japan.

Unser finished 11th in the PPG Cup standings with 72 points, 213 behind champion Alex Zanardi. Ribeiro was 22nd with just 13 points.

“We had a lot of discussions about what we wanted to do,” Penske said. “We saw the competitiveness of the car.

“In our company, it was a question of can we compete better with one or two cars? It wasn’t a decision made by myself. It was a team decision.”

The decision was to cut back. It’s the first time Penske has run just one car since 1970, when eventual Indianapolis 500 winner Mark Donohue was his lone driver.

Ribeiro accepted an offer from Penske to work on business opportunities and promote racing in his native Brazil. About 40 others also were let go. The rest rededicated themselves to putting Penske back in the winner’s circle.

“The guys who wanted to stay and go racing are the ones that are here,” Unser said. “For the guys that it was more of a job than an adventure, those are the guys that aren’t here.

“For me, I’m like in heaven. All of Penske’s organization is geared to make Al Junior go fast and win races. I love it.”

The first item of business was to address the Mercedes engine, an updated model in 1998 that presented more problems than expected. Unser was plagued particularly by gearbox woes, creating hours of lost time replacing defective ones.

“The gearbox problems really beat us down,” Penske said.

John Travis, Penske’s chief designer, said the engine underwent several structural changes over the winter, and should be more reliable this season. After some 2,000 miles of testing, Unser reports a huge improvement.

“You can get in the car in the morning and it run all day long,” he said.

With 31 victories, Unser trails CART career leader Andretti by six but has not won since September 1995.

“We’ve led a few races, but not like we’re supposed to,” Unser said. “We were always just that little bit off. We’d qualify midfield, pound our way to the lead a few times. Then we’d wind up breaking or falling out.”

Penske sees the single-car move as temporary, and would like to go back to a two-car entry next season.

“We’ll try to see if we have another opportunity,” he said. “A number of people have contacted us, but right now I want to see how we perform in the first half of the season.”

Unser, in a career-worst drought of 55 races, admits being frustrated.

“I can’t take much more of this,” he said. “The gorilla’s on my back pretty big.”