Team Penske Half as Strong After Practice

Roger Penske’s hopes of his team winning its first NASCAR Winston Cup race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway--to go with his 10 Indy 500 wins--were dampened Friday when one of his drivers, Jeremy Mayfield, suffered a “closed head injury” when he crashed during practice.

Mayfield, who was drafting down the back straightaway with teammate Rusty Wallace, hit an oil slick as he entered Turn 3, his car spinning halfway around and slamming into the concrete wall on the driver’s side.

“It was just fortunate it didn’t take out the entire Penske team,” said Wallace, who also slid in the oil dropped when Chad Little’s No. 97 blew an engine. “We were flying bumper-to-bumper when all of a sudden I saw my car turned dead sideways and slid down the race track. I was fighting it all the way trying to keep it off the wall because I’d hit the oil.

“Then I glanced in the mirror and saw Jeremy’s car flying apart with smoke everywhere. We were running and I hit the oil and he must have got just a little bit more of the oil than I got and he went right around. Jeremy hit hard. He got his bell rung pretty good.”

Mayfield was taken to Methodist Hospital, where Dr. Troy Payner, a neurological surgeon, said that his head injury would prevent Mayfield from driving in today’s seventh Brickyard 400. Mayfield, who won the NAPA 500 at California Speedway in April, was examined and released.

This leaves Penske’s hopes with Wallace, the winningest driver in Penske racing history with 33 of his 51 Winston Cup wins coming with his current team. Rick Mears, with 29, has the most Penske Indy car wins.

Penske got his long-awaited 100th (and 101st and 102nd) Indy car wins this year when Gil de Ferran won at Nazareth, Pa., which was followed by Helio Castroneves’ win at Detroit and a second win for de Ferran at Portland.

Now Penske wants to work on his Winston Cup trophy collection, which reached 41 after Wallace and Mayfield each won two races this year.

None of the 41 have been at Indianapolis, the 2 1/2-mile rectangular oval where Penske Racing won 10 Indy 500s between the late Mark Donohue in 1972 and Al Unser Jr. in 1994.

Wallace hopes to remedy that today, driving what he considers the best car he has had here, a Ford Taurus that disappointed in qualifying, but has been very fast in practice.

“Qualifying is one race, and I made a mistake in the setup that cost us, but the race is another,” said Wallace, who will be 44 next week. “We’re so confident about the motor that Penske Engines gave us that we didn’t practice with it today so it will be fresh tomorrow. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that.”

Wallace will start ninth today after qualifying at 180.303 mph Thursday. He moved up a spot when Mayfield was pulled out of the No. 4 starting position.

Kyle Petty will drive Mayfield’s No. 12 backup Taurus, which Wallace sorted out late Thursday. Petty will be the No. 4 starter, but he will drop to the rear of the 43-car field during the parade lap.

“I’m glad I could help these guys out, but more important, I’m glad that everything looks OK for Jeremy,” said Petty, who did not try to qualify because he raced Friday night in a Busch Grand National race at nearby Indianapolis Raceway Park, finishing 15th. “The circumstances aren’t very good, obviously, but me and these guys are going to do everything we can to give this car a good ride.”

It is the car Mayfield won with at Pocono in June.

Ricky Rudd, with what was a record 181.068 Thursday, and 53-year-old Darrell Waltrip, at 180.923, will start on the front row. In second-day qualifying Friday, Brett Bodine bettered Rudd’s record with a 181.072-mph lap, but he will start 26th, behind first-day qualifiers.

In addition to the potent Penske engine, the secret weapon for the No. 2 car today, Wallace said, will be Roger Penske himself.

“The captain will be here Saturday morning, and he’s always an inspiration to all the guys, myself included,” said Wallace. “Roger gets up there on the guard rail [on the roof] and sees every move that my car makes. It’s like he’s hanging over my shoulder in the car. He is up there with the spotters, but he’s more of a coach than a spotter.”

Although Penske’s racing priority is still with his CART champ car team, he makes nearly every Winston Cup race when there is no date conflict with CART. Despite running a $10-billion business operation, Penske takes a hands-on approach to his racing teams--Penske Racing for CART, and Penske Racing South and Penske-Kranefuss Racing for NASCAR.

Penske’s Winston Cup involvement dates to 1972 when Donohue, Dave Marcis and Donnie Allison drove Matadors for the newly formed team. Donohue brought Penske his first win, in 1973 at Riverside’s road course. Donohue also scored Penske’s first Indy car win, in the 1971 Pocono 500. He is the only driver to have won in both series.

Wallace was offered an opportunity to drive an open-wheel car by Penske in 1988, but he opted to stick with stock cars.

“Closest I came was one day we were shooting a commercial at Sebring [Fla.] and Danny Sullivan and Rick Mears were there with their Indy cars,” Wallace said. “Rick asked me if I wanted to try a few laps in his car, so I did. I was just getting comfortable when it started raining and the crew couldn’t get me off the track fast enough. That was it.”

Penske’s two teams are separate but equal.

Penske shares ownership of Penske Racing South with Don Miller and Wallace, a partnership that began in 1990. Miller has worked in Penske operations since 1971 in various capacities, and he has been a Wallace booster since he helped Rusty in his formative driving days around St. Louis in the late 1970s.

“Don has been one of my biggest cheerleaders and supporters, no doubt about that,” Wallace said. “He’s the one who put together the deal with Roger.”

The other team, for which Mayfield drives, is owned 50-50 by Penske and Michael Kranefuss, onetime director of Ford’s international racing program.

Kranefuss co-owned a NASCAR team with Carl Haas, with Mayfield the driver, which was sponsored by KMart. When Penske took on a KMart subsidiary, he said he wanted part of the package, so Haas sold him his 50%.

“You’d be amazed how much Roger knows what’s going on, even though he only comes in Sunday mornings, about an hour before the race, and briefs himself with not only Jeremy and Rusty, but the crew chiefs and the engineers,” Kranefuss, said.

“The glue that holds us together is Roger. Whenever he’s here, he’s up here spotting and he’ll follow whichever car’s doing the best job. He can sense how the race track changes and he’s very savvy about telling his drivers what to do.”

Notes

For the third consecutive year, Mark Martin won the final International Race of Champions on Friday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It is the first time that a driver had won three consecutive races at the track in any type of car. Dale Earnhardt finished second to win the IROC title for a record fourth time. He also won in 1990, 1995 and 1999. The 40-lap race was as uneventful as the finish, in which Martin’s winning margin of 1.327 seconds was the largest since 1992. Earnhardt collected $225,000. Martin, who led the final 32 laps and finished second in series standings, earned $100,000. All payouts are determined by finishing positions in four races. The only unusual incident occurred when Indy Racing League drivers Mark Dismore and Greg Ray touched fenders, sending Dismore into the wall. He was not injured. IRL driver Eddie Cheever, who won the IROC race in June in Michigan, was seventh.

*

Brickyard 400

Today, 10 a.m., Channel 7

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TOP QUALIFIERS

1. Ricky Rudd, Ford 181.068 mph

2. Darrell Waltrip, Ford 180.923

3. Bobby Labonte, Pontiac 180.857

4. Kyle Petty, Ford* 180.825

5. Dale Jarrett, Ford 180.697

* Car qualified by Jeremy Mayfield