Vintage Penske Performance

Run a team in the Indianapolis 500 after a five-year absence?

Roger that.

Win the Indianapolis 500 for the 11th time?

Roger that.

Finish second as well?

Roger that too.

It was a good thing for everyone else entered in Sunday’s race here that Roger Penske had only a two-car team. There’s no telling what more havoc his nearly naked cars could have wrought if he had brought two or three more, but judging by what he did with what he had, it wouldn’t have been pretty.

“What I want to know is why the Penskes come back the same year I do?” lamented Michael Andretti, the third-place finisher who also returned after a five-year absence. Presumably, he would have been first had he not been running his Dallara-Oldsmobile behind the Penske versions of the same car, Helio Castroneves driving the winning version, Gil de Ferran second.

Penske’s cars ran without the familiar Marlboro logo--federal law forbids tobacco sponsorship in more than one series--but nobody had trouble recognizing them. Theirs was the kind of tour de force racegoers had grown to know and love--or hate--in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, when to credit any team for a “Penske performance” was the ultimate compliment. Penske’s drivers led 79 of the 200 laps, an impressive enough statistic. But to appreciate the extent of the Penske dominance, consider that Castroneves and De Ferran did all of that leading in the last 90 laps, in cars built for a series largely unfamiliar to them, in a race squeezed into a busy schedule.

“It was a logistical nightmare to put this month together--just unbelievable,” De Ferran said. “Roger pushed all month to make everything better. He was always pushing, pushing, pushing. . . . I think none of us can realize how he feels now.”

Penske is among those in racing who believe that if one race stands above all others, it’s the Indianapolis 500. That pretty much explains his previous 10 victories.

In 1995, the high-riding Penske came back for another shot at the prize he never tired of winning. His drivers were Al Unser Jr., the defending champion and a two-time winner, and Emerson Fittipaldi, another two-time winner.

In one of the great upsets--and one of the most crushing humiliations--neither could qualify a car and Team Penske missed the race.

Shortly thereafter, Tony George, owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, announced formation of the Indy Racing League--in opposition to the established Championship Auto Racing Teams--and weighted the rules for getting into the 500 in favor of his new group, reserving 25 spots for IRL drivers, leaving eight for everyone else.

CART teams, incensed, chose to boycott. Thus, Penske, one of the CART founders, had no chance to redeem himself at Indy.

Then last year, after George had jettisoned his infamous 25-8 rule, car owner Chip Ganassi, whose team had replaced Penske’s as CART’s dominating outfit, bought IRL cars for Juan Montoya and Jimmy Vasser, entered them in the 500 and watched in glee as Montoya dominated.

That was all the encouragement Penske needed, and he set about regaining his rightful place here.

He not only bought IRL cars for his drivers, he gave them a chance to test-drive them in an IRL race at Phoenix in March. Neither driver finished but, as De Ferran said, it was a valuable learning experience.

“It was very important from an engine standpoint,” he said, alluding to the difference between the stock-block engines used in IRL cars and the more powerful turbocharged racing engines used in CART. “We needed to know where we were from a power standpoint.”

It also complicated things for Team Penske, which, basically, was suddenly running two teams in two series, because by then the CART season had begun.

“We were returning from [the CART season opener at Monterrey,] Mexico and going to Phoenix, and we were transferring parts in a parking lot in San Antonio,” recalled Tim Cindric, president of Penske racing.

In a hint of what was to come, Castroneves won the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach and De Ferran finished third.

When the track opened here, Penske’s drivers left immediately after a race in Nazareth, Pa., to get in an hour and a half of track time--something no other CART drivers did--and spent hours talking with former 500 winners.

They qualified well, if not spectacularly, then went off to Japan for another CART race two weeks ago, where neither won but Castroneves sat on the pole.

“I had a lot of time to go over that failure in ’95 so my biggest concern was getting qualified [for the 500],” Penske said. “Once we were qualified, I started feeling better. Then we came back from Japan and on carburetion day [Thursday], they showed strength right out of the box, so it was business as usual.

“Successful football coaches watch a lot of tape so we took time [Saturday] night to watch tapes of last year’s race--the start and the pit stops. We watched 10 times, and I think we went away with a better understanding of what we needed to do today.

“I guess our 100th win [last season at Nazareth] was a big step for us but this . . . has to be right at the top of the list.”

Where it should remain--right up until next year.