LE MANS, France (AP) – Roger Penske won the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday and celebrated Josef Newgarden’s thrilling victory like a first for Team Penske, not a record 19th for The Captain.
He watched on his cell phone as Ryan Blaney won the Coca-Cola 600 on a Mondaybroadcasting the rain-delayed NASCAR race during the Indy 500 banquet. As any race fan would.
Blaney’s win gave Penske a resume that had somehow eluded his illustrious career: Team Penske swept both Memorial Day weekend races in the US in the same year.
There was no time to enjoy his press clippings. Penske was in Detroit on Tuesday to oversee the return of downtown street racing for the first time in 32 years. — a three-day festival for a revitalized city as Penske’s gift to its hometown.
The whirlwind week ended with a sold-out Sunday race in which Team Penske driver Will Power finished second, but the Penske engine is still running at full throttle. He leads the American return to the 24 Hours of Le Mans and must arrive in France on Tuesday with a three-car effort chasing a victory that has eluded him.
“We want to win Le Mans, that’s what we’d like to do,” Penske told The Associated Press. “We have three good cars and it will be competitive. But just going there and racing, this first year with Porsche, is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time with a quality brand.
“We can build on that. But we will win.”
He’s 86 years old, but Penske is still moving at the same pace he did in his early days as a race car driver. And this same year, when he swept Indy and the Coca-Cola 600, a year that has series champion Joey Logano under contract in NASCAR and Power in IndyCar, he also wants to add the only race Penske has never won.
Penske himself once participated in the legendary French endurance race in 1963, driving a Ferrari for the American racing team. The car started on pole and never got lower than sixth when, about nine hours into the race, a broken oil pipe ended Penske’s only Le Mans run at the wheel.
He eventually gave up driving, at his father’s behest, to focus on building his global transport business and, in his spare time, one of the most respected motorsport empires.
Penske returned to Le Mans as a team owner in 1971, an effort derailed by early engine failure.
Make no mistake, Le Mans means everything to Penske with those 19 wins at Indy. And he wants one. Bad.
“I guess I put Le Mans in the category of the Indianapolis 500. Those are the two greatest races in the entire world,” Penske said.
His research is part of a deal struck with the NASCAR-owned IMSA sports car series, which this year reorganized its top class with hybrid engines to allow its competitors to compete at Le Mans. IMSA’s move made it the first American series to switch to hybrid and attracted new manufacturers to the series with new goals.
Penske is returning to Le Mans as Porsche’s factory program, and one of its 963 hybrid prototypes will wear the number 75 to commemorate 75 years of Porsche sports cars in the race’s centennial celebration.
He joins Chip Ganassi, who has a pair of Cadillacs entered, as well as another Caddy from Action Express Racing, a team owned by Bob Johnson and backed by NASCAR CEO Jim France.
France also runs a version of the Next Gen car now in its second season of NASCAR competition as part of the Garage 56 program with Chevrolet and Hendrick Motorsports. That means seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson will be coming alongside Rick Hendrick and Jeff Gordon in a crossover that no one saw coming five years ago.
But all eyes are on Penske, who is on the move.
He last won the Indy 500 with driver Simon Pagenaud in 2019, the year before he bought Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He wasn’t happy being stuck at 18 wins over three straight years at Indy; Team Penske and Newgarden knew it too.
Newgarden had barely given him victory number 19 before Penske was already talking about a 20th.
“That’s what we’re here for: to set goals for other people to try to achieve,” Penske said. “19th Indy win long overdue.”
He is relentless, at any age, and provided a sound defense of Blaney’s 59-race winless streak that was finally snapped last Monday. Penske cited mechanical failures, mistakes on pit road and a disappointment from Team Penske in Blaney as to why the driver had struggled to win.
And then he was talking about Detroit, where Penske Entertainment was the promoter of the downtown IndyCar event. The race used to be downtown for both Formula 1 and an earlier version of Indy cars, but it became a nuisance and fell completely off schedule.
It was Penske who brought IndyCar back to Detroit after his 2006 stint as chairman of the Detroit Super Bowl Committee. He wanted more for the city after its cleanup from the NFL title game, so he revitalized the repurposed and dramatically cleaned up IndyCar race at Belle Isle.
This year I wanted to bring it back downtown and wanted the event to be a celebration of IndyCar, partner Chevrolet and downtown Detroit. He wanted a party and his staff got it, even with drivers’ complaints about the actual course.
The sparkling wine has barely dried from last week’s sweep, and Detroit is still buzzing about Sunday’s race, but Penske has no time to rest. He has to pack his bags and head to Le Mans, where he believes he has a chance to win.
If his team pulls it off, there would be a surprisingly short list of firsts for Penske. It’s okay because he prefers to look at the front windshield. Win Le Mans this weekend and Penske will immediately go back to winning two in a row.
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