Team owner Penske keeps his foot on gas
day conducting interviews and driving a 50th anniversary Camaro SS around the speedway as Chevrolet and IMS officially announced he would pilot the pace car for Sunday’s race.
It was eventful but hardly a full day for a man who at 79 exudes an energy and an acuity for detail sufficient to encourage if not shame his younger subordinates toward performance by forcing them to keep pace.
“You know when you’re going to spend a day or two with RP that by the time he leaves, as happy as you are to see him, you’re almost relieved,” Team Penske President Tim Cindric told USA TODAY Sports.
Cindric is a frequent companion on Penske’s numerous trips to Australia, where the team races V8 Supercars and Penske hopes to broaden his trucking enterprise.
“You’re not happy to see him go, but you’re relieved when he goes to the next project because he’s got more energy and certainly more initiative. And when he talks about effort equals results, he puts it in himself.” ATTENTION TO DETAIL The helmets caught his attention first. His mouth widened in wonder, and his eyes brightened. His arms spread as if to gather in one of his 13 grandchildren.
Mears, Montoya, Fittipaldi, Unser, Castroneves and the rest, their helmets displayed in a glass case that served as the entrance for a 50th anniversary Team Penske exhibit at Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. And then the race cars, “jewels” he calls them, pieces of his small but profound private collection. Penske seized a 36-page pamphlet detailing the display; he was so impressed with the production that he had 53,000 extras printed for distribution, with a letter from him to every employee.
“Everybody in the company gets one, to see what we do as a team,” said Penske, just as he was noticed by teen racing fans from Colombia, one wearing a hat bearing the No. 2 for Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya, who won the Indy 500 last year with Penske.
A language barrier made it unclear whether they understood that Penske doesn’t stride through as part of the exhibit every May afternoon, but it didn’t matter. Elvis had just walked through Graceland.
Penske worked his way into the exhibit’s showroom, lingered long at a mock-up of his first Gasoline Alley garage bay in 1969, where those buttoned-up boys began the work that changed everything at this track. He was gazing at Mark Donohue’s McLaren M16B when he turned to one of the employees shepherding him on this impromptu tour. He respectfully leaned in for a word. Someone from Team Penske would be over each day in May to buff his cars, he said.
“I want our organization, whether it’s a dealership, whether it’s a car, to be the best that people see. You’re as good as you look to a certain extent, but you have to have something behind that, a foundation. I’m a detail guy.” MAXIMUM WORK ETHIC Penske placed his overnight case alongside the aisle as he made his way to the back right seat of the Gulfstream, across from what he dubs “the opportunity chair.” He usually tries to work through the most urgent emails before takeoff. He doesn’t indulge in Twitter, but he was keenly aware that Pagenaud’s finish had been controversial, and his lieutenants were assessing the fallout. Eventually, he struck upon video links he’d been sent that validated his unswaying position that either Pagenaud hadn’t committed a violation exiting the pits on a final stop or that every other driver had been guilty of the offense at some point in the race.
Penske elevated his right foot onto his satchel, and the workaday black shoe boasted a sole nearly pulled off. “Looks like I can’t afford a pair of shoes,” Penske chuckled.
He can. Penske’s companies generate in excess of $26 billion in yearly revenue, according to
He owns a 197-foot yacht named Podium, his only admitted extravagance; two airplanes, which are his “tools of capitalism”; and an estate in suburban Detroit, where he has wielded economic and philanthropic energies to help with recovery, even land a Super Bowl. His wardrobe is businesslike and tidy but not lavish. And he gets his mileage out of shoes, just like in his days after graduation from Lehigh when he worked as a self-described “tin man” selling roofing.
Penske helped fund his fuel bill when he bought his first plane in the 1960s by tearing out seats and running freight on the side. He still leverages his fleet heavily. Business and racing ventures, often intertwined by design, have kept Penske airborne for an average of 620,000 miles yearly — more than a round-trip to the moon, according to his pilot, Joe Ruggiero.
“How hard he works ... ,” Montoya said. “I mean, I’m complaining because I’m on a red-eye. He does that three times a week: breakfast in Germany, lunch in Italy and then flies back here and two days later goes to Australia. And then to Brazil and here and there. Full gas.”
It’s as if he can’t stop attempting to repay the loan his father, a retired executive for a metal fabrication company, gave him when he eschewed a successful racing career to help buy his first business, a Chevrolet dealership in Philadelphia in 1965.
“We drove to Pittsburgh, and he took $75,000 out of his savings account,” Penske said. “We were driving back across the bridge from the bank in Pittsburgh, and he said, ‘Look, if you lose this, I’ll go back to work.’ So that was enough for me to make a decision, and I would never look back.” ‘PURSUIT OF GROWTH’ The plane rose gently from the AirFlite private terminal, arcing beyond the Queen Mary, the Long Beach Grand Prix course and the container ships awaiting their turn to off-load. Penske gazed out his window, temple tip of his reading glasses in his mouth. Somewhere out there he used to race boats around Catalina Island. Affixing the glasses, he seized the satchel and the next 3 hours, 43 minutes of his workday began.
Penske’s employees, from the surrogates to whom he delegates great responsibility in running his myriad businesses to his drivers, are dogged in their assertion that he provides them tools to succeed.
“I remember when I first started working for him and we were traveling together,” said Rich Shearing, 42 and the president of Premier Truck Group, a Penske company. “Once he was sleeping on the plane, and I texted my wife and said, ‘He is human.’ ”
Business partner Tommy Fitzgerald joked that when he received a 3:15 a.m. text from Penske he answered immediately because he didn’t want Penske to think he was asleep. “Must have misdialed you,” Penske countered. “No, you were in the U.K.,” Fitzgerald responded.
At 10,000 feet, Penske engages the on-board Wi-Fi and begins flitting among his phone, tablet and paperwork. The possible impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff captures his attention until his NASCAR crew chiefs begin responding to a pointed text about loose wheels and pit road problems from that afternoon’s Sprint Cup race in Bristol, Tenn. His intent was to stoke them a bit, and he was satisfied by their earnest responses. Mission accomplished, he was on to a tuna sandwich dinner.
“We’re here to win; we’re supposed to win based on what team we have,” he said. “It’s probably harder for me to disconnect when we’ve had a poor weekend than it is when we’ve had a good weekend, because I have high expectations.”
Penske’s sensors seem never to disengage. Sprint Cup driver Brad Keselowski calls it an insatiable “pursuit of growth.” Occasionally intrigued by a conversation between two of his passengers, Penske chimed in. Topics included media ethics, younger men’s fascination with a “strong sock game” and the importance of children playing sports.
“It is easy to see business growth with a new building or race team,” said Keselowski, who won Penske’s only Cup title in 2012. “But Roger’s ability to grow intellectually, personally, and his desire to do so has not leveled off over time, and I think that makes him an exceptional person by today’s standards.” NOSE FOR BUSINESS The airstrip at Upper Cumberland Regional Airport in Sparta, Tenn., was illuminated by runway lights and a tower beacon when Penske stepped onto the tarmac just after midnight CT.
Shearing was waiting with a vehicle in the cool night air, set for a ride to a hotel and a morning visit with Fitzgerald, a Tennessee entrepreneur who has built his business from the foundation up, earning Penske’s respect and a major commitment to sell glider kits together. Fitzgerald’s company was primary sponsor for Joey Logano’s Xfinity Series car that weekend at nearby Bristol Motor Speedway.
“Oh, Roger is not going to like this,” Shearing said the next morning as he steered his SUV into a blue-gravel parking lot at Fitzgerald’s rural Byrdstown facility, where row after row of trucks, red ones and white ones and a few that could have passed for periwinkle, represented part of the $70 million in unsold inventory Penske had come to see. And what should have been a perfect glint of morning sun through blue sky was muted by a fine layer of dust.
Penske probably noticed that, too. He notices seemingly everything, such as when partners aren’t using a brand of paint or part from one of his business partners. He makes note with a wink and a hint of a grin. But they know he’s noticed.
Striding into a massive engine shop in another of Fitzgerald’s facilities, Penske passed several men eating lunch from bags and boxes at their break table by the soda machine. One worker muttered, “I think that was Roger Penske.”
“How you doing, fellas?” Penske asked.
About 30 minutes later, it was lunch at the Bobcat Den, also owned by Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald opted for the steak and loaded potato, Penske the cheeseburger and a trip to the salad bar. When Fitzgerald left the table, Penske discussed their progress with Shearing. When Penske visited the salad bar, Fitzgerald made his points. It was big business, capped with a piece of blueberry cheesecake. HANDS ON WHEEL Reaching 50 years as a team owner clearly meant something to Penske. He indulged in a preseason party in Charlotte where more than 40 of his past drivers reconvened for a night of glorious memories. And he accepted an offer to drive the pace car before Sunday’s race.
Now, to cap this whirlwind trip, Penske finally was going to drive. He stepped into the Camaro and rolled out onto the hulking and cavernously quiet track with speedway President Doug Boles.
“What struck me was just how totally serious and focused he was,” Boles said. “And it really wasn’t a light moment, and I think it’s just sort of representative of what this place does to him.”
Penske and Boles circled the track at between 90 and 120 mph before Penske pulled the car to a halt near the yard of bricks. At the site of his greatest glory and his deepest joy in sports, Penske had reached the end of this scene.
Thousands of miles lay ahead before he would return to this place for the 100th running.
“I guess it’s been a long, circuitous journey but one I’ll certainly never forget,” he had said earlier, reflecting on his last half-century. And in this moment it worked, too.