Yahoo Autos Before Roger Penske Was a Billionaire, He Was a Very Successful Amateur Racer
From the May 1962 issue of Road & Track
HE TURNED TURNED UP at the Drivers School at Marlboro, Md., in the early spring of 1958. The name on his brand new SCCA membership card was Roger Penske. A tall, dark-haired, intense young man, he chose to take his instruction in a hot fuel-injected Corvette.
Penske drew as his instructors Dick Thompson, Bark Henry and Fred Windridge. "He was a good driver," Thompson said recently, "but the only other thing I remember about him is that he came to the school with fabric brakes on the Corvette and I got him to switch to the metal type." Despite this lack of a lasting impression, Penske and Bob Davis, now a top mechanic, graduated from the school with the two competition licenses given out at that session.
Three weeks later Penske returned to Marlboro for the National races and, in the fourth event of the day, proceeded to put his schooling to good use. For 13 laps of the 20-lap event he tailed the leading Windridge-driven Corvette, only to be forced into the pits with over-heating.
That was four years ago. Today Penske needs no introduction to those who follow sports car racing in America-his ability is a matter of record. In 1961 he captured his second SCCA National Point Championship in a row. And, facing Europe's best in three of the North American Racing Season events, he consistently placed ahead of his amateur compatriots, with the exception of Jim Hall at the Riverside race. Closing the season at Nassau, he came in second behind Dan Gurney and won additional honors for being named "U.S. National Champion" by Competition Press.
In four short years, then, Penske has risen from virtual obscurity to national prominence in the tight little competitive world of racing. At 25 that isn't easy-especially when you have also gotten married, finished college and are holding down a responsible job in industry. How did Penske do it? It began something like this:
Roger S. Penske was born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Cleveland's answer to Beverly Hills or Westchester. In junior high he had a motor bike, which was soon displaced by a 500-cc Norton motorcycle when he reached high school. After several street TTs, he and the motorcycle parted company rather abruptly-on the way to school one day, at an undisclosed rate of speed, he met a car. This left him with some broken ribs, a fractured leg, a slight concussion, and minus a motorcycle.
But fate being what it is, the accident led to a part-time job in a garage and an enviable succession of used cars. "Let's see, first was the TD, then a couple of American cars, and some drag racing. Next was another MG, this time a TC which I ran in a hill climb-I was beaten, badly! Then I rebuilt and souped up a 120 Jaguar. I got my first trophy with it in a field trial. Then I joined the Ohio Valley Sports Car Club and the Left Turn Club. That was racing on dirt track ovals, which was not only fun but a good way to get a lot of experience fast."
By now Penske had moved up to a XK-120-M and was well on his way through Lehigh University. It was here that he met Ben Moore, who ultimately convinced him that the 1957 Corvette should be his next car. Immediately after his twenty first birthday he joined the SCCA, and the Marlboro Drivers School soon followed.
Penske, his wife Lissa, and their young son Roger, Jr., now live in the small town of Gladwyne, Pa., which is located slightly northwest of Philadelphia. In his den, Penske and I spent a winter's afternoon discussing his attitude toward racing.
"Why did I start with a Corvette? Well, the way I look at it, if you want to learn how to drive fast, start with a fast car. I think it's rather pointless to start with an MG, move up to a Healey, then a Jag, say. If you intend to drive fast cars don't start with a slow one! It's a good way to pick up bad habits. But, actually, I drove only a couple of races with the Corvette before I sold it."
Four months after he took his schooling at Marlboro, he not only sold the Corvette but, briefly, retired to finish college, get married and get a job. He couldn't make the retirement stick and after 3 months was ready to have at it again.
When an opportunity came to buy Bob Holbert's Porsche RS he snapped it up and then reappeared at Malboro. The event was a local affair, or about as local as any event at the popular circuit can be, but in it Penske again faced most of the competition he had started with some seven months before. In particular, he found ex-teacher Fred Windridge, who was now ensconced in a black Lister-Corvette. In two events Windridge's superior horsepower enabled him to beat Penske to the flag, but in both races his only real competition came from the little Porsche with its novice driver. Roger had really come out of "retirement."
With the RS Porsche (and, later in the season, an RSK bought from Bernie Viehl) the 1959 season was a fair-to-middlin' year for Penske. In eight races he managed to place no lower than 4th (with one DNF at Cumberland) and finished the season 3rd in the F-Modified Point Championships behind Don Sesslar and Bob Holbert.
Penske's third year started with a bang at Pensacola, Fla., in January, where, after a tight race with Gus Andrey's Tipo 61 Maserati, he managed to bring the RSK in 2nd overall. With this as a starter, the rest of the 16-race season dropped like a big plum into his pocket. By the middle of June he had the F-Mod class sewed up and was well on his way to his first championship. However, few of the season's highlights stand out in his memory with as much satisfaction as his return to Marlboro, where he ran away with the President's Cup. This was just two years after his first race there. Then there was the little-noted race at Daytona in June, which in another way was even more spectacular. Penske entered four races (in what may or may not have been an RS-60) and astounded the entire assemblage by taking all four events with ease. And this was after losing his clutch during practice, which forced him to start well back in the pack in several of the races. Then, of course, there was Nassau, where he took a first, a 4th and a 5th against some of the toughest competition in the world.
Penske's third season ended with him not only taking his own F-Modified Class but also taking 2nd in E-Modified be hind Bob Holbert. The 2nd place was due to his buying Jim Hall's RS-60 later on in the season, and several races in which he was "bumped" up to the next higher class because of a lack of entries. He also received The New York Times Driver's Award that year.
In January of 1961, Penske sold the RS-60 Porsche and took delivery from Modena of a Tipo 61 Maserati. It was in this season that Penske came of age as a driver and became recognized as a definite threat in any race that he entered. His biggest adversary was Walt Hansgen who, despite a late start due to European commitments, came closest to taking the D-Modified crown away from him. In fact, the record shows that just about all of Penske's 2nd-place finishes were because of Hansgen. But there was also the expatriate American, Peter Ryan, who threatened Penske's chances several times.
The season started with Sebring, where he and Holbert drove a superb race to finish 5th over-all (ahead of the entire Porsche team) in the lowest-displacement Porsche entered. Right after Sebring he entered the Maserati (now rechristened the Telar Special) at Vineland and took his first over-all win. Skipping the first National at Marlboro, he appeared at the VIR, only to have Hansgen beat him to the flag. Then at Cumberland, with a beautiful lead and a new lap record, he blew a piston and the race. He then took the next three races in a row, at Elkhart Lake, Lime Rock and Meadowdale. In these latter two events it was Ryan who gave him the most trouble. Ryan turned up at Lime Rock with a Lotus XIX, and the race was so fast and close that Penske invited him to share the winning lap at the end of the event. At Meadowdale Ryan drove one of the noisy and potent Comstock-Sadlers, and proceeded to push and pass Penske unmercifully. Despite a bit of metal-to-metal contact between them in one corner and several slow laps under a yellow flag, this precocious duo put on a show that the fast Meadowdale circuit will find hard to duplicate.
At Bridgehampton in August, Hansgen again beat Penske, but only after a vicious nose-to-tail, lead-changing battle. Later that month, he sold the Maserati and took delivery of one of the three Cooper Monacos in the world, and it at first appeared that this new "Telar Special" would cost him his championship. In its first race, at Indianapolis, he was leading Hansgen and going like a frightened bat when the magneto sickened, forcing him again into 2nd place. Then at the Glen in September, with a 41-sec lead, his clutch shaft bearing let go and he chalked up another DNF- he considers this loss the most irksome of his career. When the SCCA season ended, though, he had managed to squeeze out a total of 60 points, against Hansgen's 58, to take the D-Modified Point Championship and the rather ambiguous SCCA title of The Most Improved Driver of the Year.
With delivery of an F-l Cooper, he then went on to take an 8th place at the Glen Grand Prix, the second American driver under the flag (after Gurney); 4th at Riverside, behind Hall and Gurney; a 5th at Laguna Seca, with Gurney 2nd; and a 2nd in the big Nassau Tourist Trophy race, behind Dan Gurney again.
Seated across from me, silhouetted against a window, Roger Penske did not look much older than the first time I had seen him drive at Marlboro. Yet, around his eyes and in his speech were the signs of maturity and experience. He is now, of course, a family man and has a position as Industrial Sales Engineer with Alcoa Aluminum. Yet I got the feeling that his age, or perhaps his youthful appearance, is something of a private source of irritation. Its basis seems to be the feeling, at times justified, that people are not taking his racing as seriously as he does, that they feel he has come up too fast and that his successes are flukes. "I think it was up at Bridgehampton that some guy came up to Walt Hansgen after the race and said, 'That was quite sporting of you to let that kid Penske dice with you during the race, Walt.' And I'd spent the better part of the race either leading Walt or right on his tail! I gave Walt a hard time and this guy thought he was doing me a favor!" This type of unintentional criticism is fairly com m on, of course, and is something any successful driver has to expect and accept.
Like most top drivers today, Penske is a natural athlete with a high degree of balance and timing. (He is also a proficient water and snow skier, and shoots golf in the 80s.) "I developed my own style of driving" (although it has been noted that he resembles Dick Thompson in timing and brio) "and all I want is to drive smoothly and fast. Despite stories to the contrary, in 1960 I think I spun out only twice; wasn't it only twice, Lissa?" he asked, turning to Mrs. Penske. With a wry smile she agreed and named the events, each spin obviously sharp in her memory. "And I think I've had comparatively few mechanical troubles, but this is due to Roy Gane, who prepares all my cars-he maintained Elliott Pew's AC Bristol and Eve Mull's cars at one time, remember?"
We then got on the subject of the cars he had owned and driven, and his opinions of them. "Ben Moore got me to buy the Corvette and, as I mentioned, I think that was a good car for me to start with. Then there were the Porsches, the RS, the RSK, and the RS-60- I think the RSK taught me the most. I only kept the RS-60 for a couple of months before I bought the Tipo 61 Maserati." The Maserati brought to mind an opinion I had heard early in 1961 to the effect that, while Penske was a hot Porsche driver, he'd gone over his head in buying the bigger, more powerful Maserati. Penske's disgust was apparent, "Ah, that's silly! Anyone who has driven both cars knows that the Maserati is an easier car to drive. The Maser was terrific–it was more fun than any car I'd ever owned. It had all the power you could use, and had marvelous handling and brakes. I was sorry to get rid of it, but it was too heavy compared with the rear-engined jobs. Now the Monaco is an entirely different sports car. Actually, it's an F-1 car with a sports body. It's quite a bit like the Porsche, except that it handles much better. It can get quite violent though, and when it breaks loose, it's gone!
"Formula 1 racing, now, is something else again. I've got a good car but in F-1 it is harder to reach the top, mainly because it is more exacting, almost an art in itself. I like sports cars, but I think there is some good racing coming in F-1. Unfortunately, I don't think that it is too much of a crowd pleaser, probably due to the lack of spectator identification with the car. As far as U.S. participation is concerned, I think we can drive with the best from Europe. We proved that at Laguna Seca. Personally, I think I could have done better than 5th at Laguna Seca."
Since his last three cars (the Maserati, the Cooper Monaco, and the F-1 Cooper) were bought outright from the factory, I boldly asked him just where all his money came from and what kind of budget he raced on.
"Actually, the money comes from two sources. I'm fortunate enough to have as a friend John M. Wyatt III, of Richmond (VA.) who not only acts as sort of business manager, but also helps finance some of my racing expenses. Also, in 1960, just before I bought the Maserati I went to the duPont Company in Wilmington and presented the idea of using the car as part of the advertising for the new duPont radiator coolant, Telar. My idea was that I would use Telar exclusively in the car and enter it in races as the Telar Special. In return, this could be used in duPont advertising to get exposure in racing and trade magazines. The company bought the idea.
"My expenses over a year's time amount to well over $10,000, not including car purchases. Now here," as he brought out a sheaf of papers with neatly totaled columns, "is how my expenses run. All the money I get is turned over to John Wyatt, who takes care of all the book work and pays all the expenses. I don't see any of the money." In view of the foregoing, I asked whether he considered racing a business or if he might go into it on this basis in the future. Penske's answer to both questions was an emphatic, "No."
This sort of arrangement, although not specifically banned, is seldom encountered on the amateur sports car circuits. While 1962 and the coming years will undoubtedly see it become more prevalent, it is interesting to note, in this case, the timing involved. Penske entered into his contract with duPont after only his third year of racing, and actually only after his first year of note. It says much for Penske's ability as a salesman.
I then asked what he would advise for, say, a medium-income enthusiast who wanted to try his luck. "First off, of course, to get an SCCA license he will have to graduate from an accredited driver school- this I heartily recommend. But he has to remember that racing is an expensive sport, particularly if he is serious about it and is aiming for something like the National Championships. As a rule of thumb, he might figure something like this: say $3000 for his car, then about half of this amount again as expenses over a year if he is going to most of the National races. Today, with the Formula Intercontinental and the pro racing circuit money available, I think he can have a pretty good chance."
In 1962 Penske will race in the major SCCA Nationals, the large American and Canadian pro races, with the Briggs Cunningham équipe at Sebring and, for the first time, in Europe. As for further racing in Europe, Penske states,"I've considered it, and I've had some bids, but right now I don't think so–I have only a certain number of days off a year from Alcoa for my vacation. Actually, my idea of a European season would be to go over with my own car as part of an American racing team. With something like three cars and three drivers, and maybe American equipment–the new aluminum engines show quite a bit of promise–it is quite feasible. As I see it, we might be able to get, say, an oil company as a sponsor." If the past is any criterion, I, at least feel that if Penske really put his mind to it, he could probably sell the AMA the idea of sponsoring a race team!
At 25, with European racing well in the future, if at all, Penske is one of the youngest and most promising of the elite corps of American drivers. In a period when most of the top U.S. drivers are in their thirties and forties, his age, ability, and uncommon business sense may, in a few years, see him fall heir to the racing crown of the U.S.
