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From 'must' to 'bust': The plight of customer Indycar builders


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#1 biercemountain

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Posted 04 June 2013 - 12:00

I know it's probably somewhat complicated but why does it seem that so many chassis builders at Indy went from having the must have car to receivership within a decade or so. It happened to March, it happened to Lola and then to Reynard. Is it a proverbial "too many eggs in one basket" sort of thing? I can imagine it's tough to supply the majority of the field one year and suddenly have your customer base jump ship for the hot new chassis from a competitor.

Don't get me wrong, I think that variety in chassis choices is better than the one-make situation we have now. I can also understand the desire for cost containment.

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#2 Charlieman

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Posted 04 June 2013 - 20:44

A further question is whether any of those manufacturers expected to sell (and take orders for) so many cars?

My guess that the pressure to supply, to find subcontractors etc may have led to management taking their eye off the ball. According to marque histories, lots of manufacturers built loads of cars one season, only to discover that they'd made less profit then the previous year.

#3 Michael Ferner

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Posted 04 June 2013 - 21:01

Add Miller to that list... :cry:

#4 E1pix

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Posted 05 June 2013 - 07:18

Simple as putting everything into one basket... dependent on X number of sales (performance) one year to the next.

#5 alansart

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Posted 05 June 2013 - 08:24

March, Lola and Reynard were all UK companies and benefited from favourable exchange rates. That changed over time eating into profits. Not the only reason but I think it was part of the problem.

Lola and Reynard also got involved in F1 which cost them dearly.

Edited by alansart, 05 June 2013 - 08:24.


#6 Tony Matthews

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Posted 05 June 2013 - 13:15

I went to Lola just after a major shift in the exchange rate (can't remember which year) and there was a degree of panic that the dollar was worth 10% ish less, suddenly. I remember being a bit miffed that, having shown sympathy and understanding for Lola's situation, when I pointed out that I was hit too, my contact said "Well it hardly affects you, does it?" Admittedly I didn't have the problems that Lola did, but even so , 10% is 10%, and I lost that too. In fact, when I first worked for an American client the dollar was 1.43 to the pound, and over the next decade it went to 1.86, via 1.99 or even parity. I always quoted in dollars, so the clients knew exactly what they were in for, and just hoped there wouldn't be a dramatic fall in the pound between quoting and being paid!

#7 canon1753

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 00:57

If the cars were competitive, great... If it was a March 88C... March had to have expected and invested in spares and when it was slow at Indy, people ran to Lola. Whatever was fast customers flocked to. Then March went to Alfa and Porsche for their commissioned car and Lola then was the customer car until Reynard. As stated, F1 disasters didn't help Reynard and Lola. Getting locked out of the IRL didn't help either.

But even there- Dallara has ruled the roost, but Gforce the Panoz Gforce stopped (got the champ car contract, but was a trickier car to drive most places), and the Falcon- which beat out Lola (I think) for the third car never turned the wheel. Riley and Scott quickly realized sportscars were a better investment than the IRL when they won Phoenix and were slow at Indy...



#8 mariner

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 11:51

I think having rich -ish but not mega-rich teams may have been a problem. IF mege-rich you could build your own ( Penske) or buy one of each make - just to see.

If rich -ish you can afford to buy a new car each year so its easy to switch to " chassis of the moment"

Also March, Lola and Reynard were doing Indy big time whilst ground effects technology was developing fast. One peice of smart analyis - or luck- in aero testing could buy you a huge speed increase so teams HAD to switch to your chassis to qualify at Indy.

#9 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 08 June 2013 - 12:23

Exactly. Basically at the end of the 90s, team budgets per car were almost double(if not more) what they are now.

#10 biercemountain

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Posted 10 June 2013 - 15:44

How did certain teams get hold of a Penske chassis? Was it a first come, first served or did you need to have a relationship with Roger?

#11 Nemo1965

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Posted 10 June 2013 - 19:35

How did certain teams get hold of a Penske chassis? Was it a first come, first served or did you need to have a relationship with Roger?


If I interpret 'The Unfair advantage' by Mark Donohue right (in which he describes his career, largely with Penske!), in the sixties and seventies team Penske wanted to do things 'their way', and they struck deals with companies and drivers that would give them that opportunity. I think, again only based on the book, Penske could have hauled in easier and better deals sometimes...

Having said that, the deal with Porsche for their Canam-car was purely based on the idea of: 'These Germans can built us the most powerfull engines.'

I will leaf through the book and try to find some details about Indy car deals.




#12 Tony Matthews

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Posted 10 June 2013 - 21:43

How did certain teams get hold of a Penske chassis? Was it a first come, first served or did you need to have a relationship with Roger?

Others will know better than me, but I think there were only a couple of years that another team was able to buy a current Penske chassis, every other time the cars were a year old. If you are going to the considerable expense of building cars for yourself because you hope to have an advantage over all the other teams, it doesn't make a lot of sense to sell current copies to those teams...

#13 Emery0323

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 01:20

Penske did sell the up-to-date PC-18 to the Pat Patrick team in 1989. That car was Fittipaldi's first winner at Indianapolis.
Pat Patrick was planning to retire at the end of that year.
Did Penske sell them the car as an inducement to Fittipaldi to sign with him for 1990?

In their prep of the car, Pat Patrick's team supposedly found a weak spot with the clutch mechanism that they rectified.
Al Unser's Penske-entered car dropped out with clutch trouble, but Emerson's did not suffer the same fate.

So, it seems, even the vaunted Penske team missed a weakness in their own car that somebody else rectified!

#14 Tony Matthews

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 08:24

Penske did sell the up-to-date PC-18 to the Pat Patrick team in 1989. That car was Fittipaldi's first winner at Indianapolis.
Pat Patrick was planning to retire at the end of that year.
Did Penske sell them the car as an inducement to Fittipaldi to sign with him for 1990?

The Patrick PC18 I remembered, but I think the Mobil PC25 must have been a current car too.

#15 Ross Stonefeld

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 11:01

Wasn't there an Alumax/Bettenhausen Penske at one point? I think you'd sell customer cars to smaller 'less competitive teams'. With all due respect, they weren't going to make your life too difficult if you sold them your car. Though if Hogan had continued to run a Penske in 97 with Franchiti-Mercedes, Penske might have felt a little silly at times.

I think the Mobil 1 car was a little more complicated. That was Fittipaldi's last car and had some Marlboro South America backing. Penske ran three cars (Unser Jr, Fittipaldi, Tracy) in 94, then Tracy went to Newman-Haas in 95, then back to Penske in 96. At which point Emerson went to a Marlboro/Mobil Penske-Mercedes. Just run by another team. I *think* our fountain of all 90s CART knowledge, Nigel, clarified that one before. That could have been a contractual issue where they had to run cars for all three drivers, but delegated the third. I was going to say spun off but that means something different in the racing world :p

#16 biercemountain

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 12:01

Who was responsible for the Wildcat chassis in the 80's? Nice looking cars.

#17 racinggeek

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 22:48

Wasn't there an Alumax/Bettenhausen Penske at one point?


Yep, the first half of the 1990s. I remember Stefan Johansson giving it a few good runs, and a quick search says Tony B. got to drive one himself for a couple of those years.

#18 racinggeek

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Posted 11 June 2013 - 22:54

Who was responsible for the Wildcat chassis in the 80's? Nice looking cars.


IIRC, Gordon Kimball (Charlie's pop) was designer of record, and the great Jim McGee was the chief wrench. Agreed, sharp lookers.

#19 Nigel Beresford

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Posted 16 June 2013 - 19:41

Wasn't there an Alumax/Bettenhausen Penske at one point? I think you'd sell customer cars to smaller 'less competitive teams'. With all due respect, they weren't going to make your life too difficult if you sold them your car. Though if Hogan had continued to run a Penske in 97 with Franchiti-Mercedes, Penske might have felt a little silly at times.

I think the Mobil 1 car was a little more complicated. That was Fittipaldi's last car and had some Marlboro South America backing. Penske ran three cars (Unser Jr, Fittipaldi, Tracy) in 94, then Tracy went to Newman-Haas in 95, then back to Penske in 96. At which point Emerson went to a Marlboro/Mobil Penske-Mercedes. Just run by another team. I *think* our fountain of all 90s CART knowledge, Nigel, clarified that one before. That could have been a contractual issue where they had to run cars for all three drivers, but delegated the third. I was going to say spun off but that means something different in the racing world :p


I expect Franchitti would have done well with a 97 Hogan Penske, especially since it would have been on Firestone tyres. Sadly we didn't enjoy that luxury...

Yes, the Bettenhausen team raced a year old Penske car in several seasons (I don't have time to look it up), but in 1993 they ran a current PC22 which was driven (off the top of my head) by Stefan Johansson, which was engineered by Tom Brown who was on loan from Penske Cars. The following year Tom moved across to the factory team and engineered Emerson, carrying on through 1996. As I've noted here before, by 1996 the general feeling in the team was that Emerson had had a good run, and it was probably time for him to hang up his helmet. Up until pretty late on we were expecting to run a two car team for Al Jr. and Paul Tracy. It came as something of a surprise to us when the Hogan Penske deal was announced, and I believe basically Emerson leaned on Marlboro South America to fund this separate (but fully integrated) program. Emerson's car in 1996 was a full factory effort run out of the Penske Racing shop in Reading, PA. It was prepared to the exact same spec as the Marlboro cars of Tracy and Al Jr., but was paid for by a different commercial arrangement from the Marlboro deal of the other two cars, so it was analogous to the Yardley / Texaco-Marlboro arrangement at McLaren in 1974 (which also, of course, involved Emerson). That third of the team operated out of a different truck (parked alongside the two Marlboro Team Penske trucks), and was co-owned by Carl Hogan, with Tom Wurtz as team manager and Rick Rinaman as crew chief. The car livery was different, and the Hogan-Penske crew uniforms were different, but otherwise it was effectively a three car team with a slightly lop-sided management structure and with everyone getting equal treatment and sharing knowledge (although Al Jr. definitely adhered to an updated version of Uncle Bobby's maxim "I wasn't put on this earth to help Rick Mears go fast"). Junior would answer a question truthfully, but he wasn't about to volunteer information.

Moving on to the use of Penske cars by other teams... I wasn't there in 1989 when Patrick Racing beat Penske with their PC18, but I do know it left somewhat of a scar in Reading. As far as I know, the supply of the PC18 to Patrick was a quid pro quo in return for Emerson and the Marlboro money moving across to Penske for 1990. Obviously designing, building and running your own car is hugely more complex and difficult than just buying a car and then developing it. Of course, if you get it right then building your own car can yield huge dividends (PC17, PC22, PC23...) but if you get it wrong then it's truly horrible (PC27..). Patrick was a top, top team and so they could put their resources in to improving the car, while the factory team had to split its resources between development and troubleshooting. That is not to make any excuses - Patrick beat Penske because they did a better job. The Penskes weren't designed to be easy and quick to make. The true strength of Penske Cars was the skill and capability of the manufacturing group who were able to make the parts which we had designed without much consideration for ease of manufacture - everything was performance orientated. As a very visible example, compare the complexity and quality of construction of a Penske "header box" (i.e. the heat insulating box around the exhaust primaries) with one made and supplied by Lola or Reynard. At Penske Cars we weren't hindered by considerations of having to make dozens of examples of a part, down to a price, in a short time. Similarly the rear wheel bearing package was considerably more complex on the Penske, requiring careful assembly with carefully sized preload shims. The Lola and Reynard used a deep groove ball / roller bearing pairing which was essentially idiot-proof to assemble (and there were certainly times when our fancy package caused problems that bit us in the bum). In addition, if you are supplying a car, you have to prepare support documentation, training for sub assemblers, spares and so on. As I say, the Penskes weren't designed for "mass" production and they weren't really suited for operation by teams with anything less than very highly skilled personnel.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 16 June 2013 - 20:43.


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#20 Allen Brown

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Posted 17 June 2013 - 08:21

Penske initially built cars for customers - as opposed to just selling redundant team cars - in 1979 when his motivation was clearly to increase the number of competitive runners in CART as it sought to finish off the USAC series. Half a dozen PC6-Cosworths made a better show than half a dozen "dinosaur" Eagle-Offys.