146 replies to this topic

[fan27]

I was looking through some old CART results and it struck me that Penske in 1999 appeared to be a bit out of sorts. I've always thought of them as having a stable driver line up but in '99 they ran Al Unser Jr in one car, with Tarso Marques, Gonzalo Rodriguez and Alex Barron in the other car. It also looks as though they only ran a single car until round 5 of the series (based on Wikipedia).

Obviously with the sad death of Gonzalo at Laguna Seca it forced them into another change, but was the reason for all the changes purely down to financial reasons (ie: Marquez and Rodriguez bringing cash), or was Penske testing different drivers for 2000?

Obviously 2000 was a good season for the team with De Ferran and CastroNeves, so what went wrong in 1999? I'm hoping that Nigel Beresford will step in and give us some "inside info"!

[Matt Hughes]

Have always been a big fan of Penske, what with being Poole born-and-bred .

Unfortunately I can't give you any information, but that 1999 Penske was a beautiful car. Shame the raised nose concept didn't seem to work out for them.

EDIT: worth noting, of course, that Penske sadly lost two drivers in 1999. One current at Laguna Seca, and one future at Fontana.

Edited by Matt Hughes, 01 August 2012 - 10:59.

[Lee Towers]

Penske did start with one driver in '99 with Unser Jnr in the #2 car, but he broke his ankle at Homestead.

They also kept swapping between their own chassis and a Lola, I think they preferred one of the ovals, or maybe just the superspeedways, and one for the road courses, I cant remeber which way around though. I read a post by Nigel Beresford on which he explained they had some problems with the rear end of their own car, something aroud the short wheelbase perhaps.

How high Unser Jnr's motivation was at this time is perhaps questionable, a series champion running around at the back of the pack would hardly does wonders for one's motivation. There was a few times when Marques, hardly a superstar, jumped in the car and was quicker than Jnr.

Penske were also using Mercedes engines, which were not completitve that year, Moore won at Homestead but I don't think a Mercedes powered car won again, and they were using Goodyear tyres, which were a way off the Firestones. De Ferran won at Portland (I think) with them, but that was their lot. Goodyear pulled out at the end of the year, how commited they were to the series over the end of the season is perhaps open to question too.

A difficult car and tyres and an engine which was behind the competition, as well as question marks over driver motivation was something even Penske could not overcomes in 1999 I think...

What happened with Rodriguez and then Moore really rounded off a dreadful year for Penske in the worst possible way.

[Nigel Beresford]

I was looking through some old CART results and it struck me that Penske in 1999 appeared to be a bit out of sorts. I've always thought of them as having a stable driver line up but in '99 they ran Al Unser Jr in one car, with Tarso Marques, Gonzalo Rodriguez and Alex Barron in the other car. It also looks as though they only ran a single car until round 5 of the series (based on Wikipedia).

Obviously with the sad death of Gonzalo at Laguna Seca it forced them into another change, but was the reason for all the changes purely down to financial reasons (ie: Marquez and Rodriguez bringing cash), or was Penske testing different drivers for 2000?

Obviously 2000 was a good season for the team with De Ferran and CastroNeves, so what went wrong in 1999? I'm hoping that Nigel Beresford will step in and give us some "inside info"!

Had to smile at the comment about Marques and Rodriguez bringing cash. Penske Racing employs drivers purely for the performance they bring (or are expected to bring). You can't buy a drive at Penske Racing - they're not for sale.

[Nigel Beresford]

To answer your questions properly will take a little while. Let me get back to you this evening.

Thanks

Nigel

[fan27]

Had to smile at the comment about Marques and Rodriguez bringing cash. Penske Racing employs drivers purely for the performance they bring (or are expected to bring). You can't buy a drive at Penske Racing - they're not for sale.

Hi Nigel,

Yes, that's what I thought, but then Marques was a strange choice, given the talent around. My only conclusion was that he'd paid his way into the seat. In a way Rodriguez was also a bit of a strange choice. He was a good driver, no doubt, but there were drivers around with better C.V.'s.

Can you shed any light on the driver choice, and why Penske only started the season with one car?

[Nigel Beresford]

Hi Nigel,

Yes, that's what I thought, but then Marques was a strange choice, given the talent around. My only conclusion was that he'd paid his way into the seat. In a way Rodriguez was also a bit of a strange choice. He was a good driver, no doubt, but there were drivers around with better C.V.'s.

Can you shed any light on the driver choice, and why Penske only started the season with one car?

Marques was advocated by Creighton Brown, who if you aren't aware was a partner in McLaren in the Ron Dennis era, and I suppose Marlboro put him forward to RP as a candidate. Obviously hindsight is 20:20 but at the time he was highly rated as a "prospect". Things didn't start out so well when he crashed a car testing at Nazareth.

After the disaster and expense of 1998 it was always the intention to "back up and punt" and run only one car in 1999, but when Al Jr broke his leg in the first corner of the first lap of the first race of the year then obviously things changed.

[Ross Stonefeld]

I'm glad someone brought this up and the 'ride buying' question because I've always wanted to ask Nigel but figured it was a slightly accusatory topic and didn't fit with Penske's history.

That said I remember during the Ribeiro era some comments that it had to do with Marlboro South America. Which I think meant they contributed part of the budget. Which even if true doesn't classify as a ride buy, because Ribeiro was decently rated at the time of his signing. And it fits with what was the 'accepted wisdom' of the time. Marlboro was still a little more regional back then, remember all the South American and Italian drivers in all sorts of series that had Marlboro chevons on their suits and helmets? The F1 stuff was consolidated behind Ferrari in 1997, but there was still some out of Brazil. I *think* Marlboro South America was picking up the bill for Emerson Fittipaldi at Hogan in 1996?

But again I don't have specific knowledge of that. It's what was thought at the time though if I felt like being thorough I could search through all the public documents from the tobacco lawsuits with the American state governments, that put all the Marlboro motorsport information online. Down to individual correspondence between Team Penske and Marlboro USA.

Anyways, the driver signings did fit that pattern though perhaps it was accidentally.

On the other hand, particularly in 1999, who were you going to put in the car? Anyone decent was already employed. Roberto Moreno would have been ideal(and probably suited our mythical Marlboro subsidy) but he was busy replacing Mark Blundell at Pacwest and Fittipaldi at Newman/Haas, he did nearly an entire season.

I trust Nigel when he says Tarso was rated but at the time I had no impression of him one way or the other. Then again Noberto Fontana was hotly tipped a few years prior and in retrospect was a big fizzle in both F1 and CART. Trying out Barron for the Superspeedways was a smart move(I always wondered how good he was or if Atlantics was just weak) and Gonzalo Rodriguez was both quick(F3000 in 1999 was possibly the most absurdly competitive series ever) and not getting much love from F1.

[fan27]

I remember meeting Creighton around that time when he seemed to be touting various Brazilian drivers (Marcello Battistuzzi, anyone?) - didn't Creighton have some farming interests in Brazil?

I saw Marques compete in a F3000 race at Kyalami in late '94 and thought that he would be very good but he never seemed to deliver. Fast but erratic, seems to best describe him. I agree about Rodriguez, he was doing a great job in F3000. He struggled a bit in F3 but the added power of F3000 seemed to suite him. He just never struck me as an obvious choice as a stand in for Penske.

Perhaps, as Ross says, there was some incentive to pick a South American driver due to Marlboro ties. I love hearing storis of this era from Nigel, so I hope that you don't mind all the questions!

[Lee Towers]

Perhaps how well Montoya had done coming stright from F3000 in 98 to CART helped out Rodriguez?

Ganassi went with Junqueria and Minassian for '01 (top two in F3000 in '00) remeber. Junqueria was part of the Williams tie up of the time I would imagine, but if Montoya hadn't done so well it's difficult to imagine Minassian getting the seat is it not?

Obviously Montoya was something special so perhaps gave F3000, competitive as it was, more kudos than it perhaps warrented in CART at the time?

I did rate Rodriguez, very sad indeed

[fan27]

Perhaps how well Montoya had done coming stright from F3000 in 98 to CART helped out Rodriguez?

Ganassi went with Junqueria and Minassian for '01 (top two in F3000 in '00) remeber. Junqueria was part of the Williams tie up of the time I would imagine, but if Montoya hadn't done so well it's difficult to imagine Minassian getting the seat is it not?

Obviously Montoya was something special so perhaps gave F3000, competitive as it was, more kudos than it perhaps warrented in CART at the time?

I did rate Rodriguez, very sad indeed

Lee: Montoya was part of the David Sears management stable so I imagine that when Montoya did well at Ganassi, Chip asked David if he had any more like him! I always felt that Nic Minassian got a bit of a rough deal in CART. He had a massive shunt at Indy when the engine blew during practice and I think that knocked him around quite a bit. Hornish spun in front of him during the race and he was forced into the pit lane and broke the gearbox trying to slow down to the pitlane speed limit.

I think that Nazareth he had another shunt in qualifying, although I heard it was due to the team leaving the front anti roll bar loose - all speculation though! Another crash with Fittipaldi on one of the ovals and I think that Ganassi had had enough. A shame as Nic was (is) never really a crasher.

Rodriguez had the race win at Spa in F3000 and looked to be a bit of a star in the making, it's such a shame what happened at Laguna Seca. Laguna was the first CART race that I'd ever attended, flying over from the UK to speak to a few Atlantic teams who were running FF2000 cars, hoping for a test. I remember arriving at the circuit expecting to find the CART cars going around only to have dead silence and a sombre mood.

[Nigel Beresford]

Comments in italics - Thanks, Nigel

That said I remember during the Ribeiro era some comments that it had to do with Marlboro South America. Which I think meant they contributed part of the budget. Which even if true doesn't classify as a ride buy, because Ribeiro was decently rated at the time of his signing. And it fits with what was the 'accepted wisdom' of the time. Marlboro was still a little more regional back then, remember all the South American and Italian drivers in all sorts of series that had Marlboro chevons on their suits and helmets? The F1 stuff was consolidated behind Ferrari in 1997, but there was still some out of Brazil. I *think* Marlboro South America was picking up the bill for Emerson Fittipaldi at Hogan in 1996?

In all honesty we had kind of hoped that Emerson would retire at the end of 1995, and he pulled off some sort of a deal to bring together Marlboro, Hogan and Penske. I'm not privy to any details, but the three car team we ran in 1996 seemed to come out of the blue - those of us in Reading were sort of expecting just to run Paul & Al. I *think* you're right about the funding coming from South America, but I'm an engineer, so all I know about the commercial side comes from workshop chit chat.

To be quite honest RP's selection of Ribeiro was a surprise to us in the team, but as far as I know he was chosen on merit and not because of any Marlboro South America money. I believe our deal was with Phillip Morris Inc. of NYC, to the extent that the Marlboro press attaches didn't attend the Canadian or Australian races because they didn't "own" the brand in those countries. As Ross says, Ribiero was rated rather more highly at the start of 1998 than he was by the end. He's a nice guy and I believe he still has business interests in Brazil in association with Roger.

Anyways, the driver signings did fit that pattern though perhaps it was accidentally.

On the other hand, particularly in 1999, who were you going to put in the car? Anyone decent was already employed. Roberto Moreno would have been ideal(and probably suited our mythical Marlboro subsidy) but he was busy replacing Mark Blundell at Pacwest and Fittipaldi at Newman/Haas, he did nearly an entire season.

Exactly the problem, though Moreno did become a test driver for us at some point during that period.

I trust Nigel when he says Tarso was rated but at the time I had no impression of him one way or the other. Then again Noberto Fontana was hotly tipped a few years prior and in retrospect was a big fizzle in both F1 and CART. Trying out Barron for the Superspeedways was a smart move(I always wondered how good he was or if Atlantics was just weak) and Gonzalo Rodriguez was both quick(F3000 in 1999 was possibly the most absurdly competitive series ever) and not getting much love from F1.

Gonzalo was the real deal, and although he was with the team for only a brief period, he was immensely popular in a way none of the other drivers that year managed. Ultimately I suppose there was no immediate future in it because RP's long term plan included Greg Moore & Gil de Ferran, but that wasn't really something we were thinking about. He just gave the team a lift at a time when we were really struggling. It's funny, although it must have been sheer agony for Roger that year, he never let us drop our chins. We'd be in the truck after some awful qualifying performance and he'd be "where are we...sixteenth? That's great! We were eighteenth last week!". However he felt inside, he knew everyone was looking at him to provide the encouragement to dig ourselves out of the mess.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 01 August 2012 - 16:37.

[Tony Matthews]

This doesn't add anything to the thread, and it may be a year early - I sort of lost touch with Penske Cars after the PC27, and it was drawn in 1998, but may be the car used in '99 too. Nigel will no doubt put me right.

[king_crud]

as an aside, the indycars of that era were beautiful, so much better than the ones we have today. What went wrong? (this is more of a rhetorical question)

[Nigel Beresford]

Yes, they were lovely, and the quality of construction & aesthetics of a 1992 Penske puts the current 20 years younger cars to shame. My personal favourite is the PC22, but that's for selfish reasons because I was engineering Tracy and we won 5 races that year. Aesthetically it was a nicer car, without the tail fin and the BBS wheels (which look heavy and dense compared with the Penske 6 spokers of 1993), and all the add on aero bells & whistles that came along as we tried to keep up with the Reynards in later years.

Tony, the cutaway is of the PC27 as you say. The PC28 ("PC99") was very similar except for a 2" longer bell housing to improve the connection between the compressor outlet and the plenum, and a different brand of dampers. Otherwise I can't really remember what the mechanical differences were.

[king_crud]

yes, the cars actually looked fast, the ones today look like trucks

[Lee Towers]

Lee: Montoya was part of the David Sears management stable so I imagine that when Montoya did well at Ganassi, Chip asked David if he had any more like him! I always felt that Nic Minassian got a bit of a rough deal in CART. He had a massive shunt at Indy when the engine blew during practice and I think that knocked him around quite a bit. Hornish spun in front of him during the race and he was forced into the pit lane and broke the gearbox trying to slow down to the pitlane speed limit.

I think that Nazareth he had another shunt in qualifying, although I heard it was due to the team leaving the front anti roll bar loose - all speculation though! Another crash with Fittipaldi on one of the ovals and I think that Ganassi had had enough. A shame as Nic was (is) never really a crasher.

Rodriguez had the race win at Spa in F3000 and looked to be a bit of a star in the making, it's such a shame what happened at Laguna Seca. Laguna was the first CART race that I'd ever attended, flying over from the UK to speak to a few Atlantic teams who were running FF2000 cars, hoping for a test. I remember arriving at the circuit expecting to find the CART cars going around only to have dead silence and a sombre mood.

Yes, the David Sears link ties in with Minassian too, didn't he run for Sears in F3000 in '00, with David Saelens in the D2 backed cars?

I thought Minassian got a rough deal there too, I thought Ganassi running two rookies was an odd one, and Montoya left some big shoes to fill. I was glad when Gidley got the ride though, I thought de deserved a full time one for '01 after his exploits for Derrick Walker and John Della Penna over the few years before. Then he had that hideous crash at Road America under the bridge.

What a shame your first visit to CART, at such a fabulous circuit and setting, was on such a sad weekend.

[Nigel Beresford]

What a shame your first visit to CART, at such a fabulous circuit and setting, was on such a sad weekend.

It is a shame - Laguna is a fantastic circuit in a fantastic location, and poor Gonzalo's accident thankfully hasn't overshadowed it forever (unlike, say, Zolder).

The problems in 1999 had their roots in 1997. Nigel Bennett had been the chief designer for all Penske cars since 1988, and had been very successful indeed. However, he began to feel in the mid 90s that he was struggling to continue to add performance to the cars, and wanted to back away from the role of Chief Designer at the end of 1997. Consequently Penske hired John Travis from Lola to work alongside Nigel for a year in 1996, before assuming Chief Designer responsibilities and designing a car for 1998. My personal opinion is that at that time there were certain "qualities" which we took for granted as being in the nature of the technology of the sport - firstly, the Goodyear tyres behaved in such a way that when new they gave a peak performance that rapidly declined after a couple of laps to a steady, significant degradation. Secondly, the cars were very sensitive to rear ride height changes. Subsequently as we worked with Firestone tyres and the Reynard car in later years we learned that these "qualities" that we had taken for granted were far from universal - they were merely characteristics of the equipment we had been ignorantly creating or using for years. The Firestone tyres didn't degrade at anything like the same rate, and the Reynard car had a much wider and benign performance envelope. Our own development of the Penske car had caused us to create a more and more focused performance envelope in our efforts to match the Reynard, so that although we were very competitive in short oval trim (where ride height and pitch variation is small), we were hopeless in road course trim.

John Travis is a superb designer, but in retrospect I think he made an error in pushing Ilmor to make the 1998 engine (known as the "108E") as compact as possible, in order to minimise the disruption of the airflow to the rear wing. Ilmor certainly achieved this target, but at the considerable expense of making the packaging of the induction system very tight indeed. At a time when it became apparent that Honda were making considerable gains by careful positioning of the injectors and increasing the plenum volume, Ilmor's hands were tied by the tight packaging imposed on them. They simply had no room for manoeuvre.

The 1998 PC27 was a lovely car, beautifully designed and constructed. However, it was horrendously unreliable in the early part of the year. The longitudinal gearbox was all new, and required considerably more finesse to assemble than the transverse box it had replaced, which had been continuously refined over the previous 8 years. There was virtually zero carry-over content from the PC26 to the PC27, so there were many, many bugs to work out of the car. Testing was hindered by gearbox oil leaks, and the car was delivered late to the team (normally we would run a new car before Christmas - the PC27 was the first car to miss this target).

In addition, Al Jr. had his own personal problems to deal with, which are in the public domain and which I don't need to expand on.

So, we had a complex car which had great potential but was unreliable, a beautifully compact engine which was very good but had limited development potential, tyres which were not competitive with Firestone and a driver (AUJ) who was under all sorts of external pressures. Ribeiro was a good guy, but was shocked to the core at his first experience of the Goodyear tyres in comparison to the Firestones he'd used previously.

Attacking these problems through 1998 was expensive, and for 1999 Roger decided to pull back to a one car team so that we could concentrate on Al Jr (a situation he loved) and focus on getting ourselves out of the mire. Personally I had to move over to Reading for the first 6 months of the year in order to tie 'Racing and 'Cars closer together and oversee technical liaison.

At the beginning of 1999 Goodyear acknowledged that they had a problem competing with Firestone. Key engineering and management personnel from all of the Goodyear CART teams attended a meeting at Goodyear world headquarters in Akron, Ohio in January 1999. Goodyear racing personnel gave lectures explaining where they thought they needed to improve in relation to Firestone, and how they planned to do so. Part of the plan was to create new compounding plants which could more quickly create new rubber in small quantities,in order to accelerate the development process. The teams would be expected to have an open book policy at tests so that the collective group could progress more quickly.

Obviously, as stated above, things immediately went wrong when Al broke his leg on the first lap of the first race of the year, so we were on the back foot straight away. The year was a nightmare, probably the worst in Penske's history other than 1975, when Mark Donohue was killed. After a few races Roger decided to buy a Lola, because Helio had been going very well in Carl Hogan's car. However, whilst the Lola was pretty good at developing downforce, it was not very competitive on the superspeedways where low drag was more important, so we reverted to using the PC28 for those races. As mentioned, the only highlights were the brief period Gonzalo was with us, and the sheer elation and surprise when RP announced that he's signed Greg and Gil. Immediately afterwards they came to the UK with Roger, and we visited Lola, Reynard and Ilmor. Part of this process was to impress on them the scale of Roger's commitment to regaining success, and the other was nominally to decide what type of car we would use in 2000, since it was clear that Roger couldn't afford to keep on giving Penske Cars the opportunity to build our own cars. The philosophy became one of going to the same tyres, cars and engines as had been beating us, so that there were no more excuses for the team. John Travis and I had meetings with Reynard and Lola engineers, but in truth Roger had already decided that Reynard was the way to go. Our experience with Lola in 1999 had been ho-hum, whereas Reynard's team support and the quality of their manufacturing was considerably better.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 01 August 2012 - 21:21.

[Tony Matthews]

Thanks a lot, Nigel, you can't beat this sort of 'Horse's Mouth' information.

[Gregor Marshall]

Fascinating thread, really interesting to learn more about the 1999 season as I used to record the races on Video as I was a big fan after watching Zanardi's exploits in previous seasons and Penske always fascinated me with their seemingly amazing attendtion to detail in a McLaren-type way.

I remember meeting Creighton around that time when he seemed to be touting various Brazilian drivers (Marcello Battistuzzi, anyone?) - didn't Creighton have some farming interests in Brazil?

IIRC Creighton was either married to a Brazilian lady or she was his girlfriend - I remember meeting them both around '93ish as Creighton had been invited to do a TVR Tuscan race and asked my late father for some coaching and in return he was going to get an F1 for the weekend. I can't remember what happened but Dad never got the F1!!

[Lee Towers]

Fascinating thread, really interesting to learn more about the 1999 season as I used to record the races on Video as I was a big fan after watching Zanardi's exploits in previous seasons and Penske always fascinated me with their seemingly amazing attendtion to detail in a McLaren-type way.

I used to record them too, they were on in the middle of the night on Channel 5 in the UK, with the Ben Edwards & Jeremy Shaw commentary I think, what a great commentary pairing that was!

I recently picked up the Autocourse 1999 CART album (to go with my 2000 one) online for £8, there are a few on amazon now at £10, they are such good reads -

http://www.amazon.co...0/dp/1874557446

[B Squared]

Nigel - Thanks for taking the time to fill us in with your great inside stories. Much appreciated.

[Henri Greuter]

Had to smile at the comment about Marques and Rodriguez bringing cash. Penske Racing employs drivers purely for the performance they bring (or are expected to bring). You can't buy a drive at Penske Racing - they're not for sale.

Hey Nigel,


No offence intended OK? We know another.....

But what about the situation of Bill Alsup and ABDick sponsorship in the very eraly eightties?
Alsup was definitely not the kind of driver penske would hire because of his outstanding capabilities.
Do you know a bit about that too maybe? It is the most unusual driver Penske ever hired I think.


greetings, henri

[Nigel Beresford]

Hey Nigel,


No offence intended OK? We know another.....

But what about the situation of Bill Alsup and ABDick sponsorship in the very eraly eightties?
Alsup was definitely not the kind of driver penske would hire because of his outstanding capabilities.
Do you know a bit about that too maybe? It is the most unusual driver Penske ever hired I think.


greetings, henri

Trust you to bring that up! As you know, it was well before my time... you need to ask Guy Oder about that one since I believe he worked on that car. Whatever the specifics of that particular situation (and for sure it was something that was going to be beneficial to Penske), the basic tenet remains that Penske employs his drivers - they don't hire the team.

[Henri Greuter]

Trust you to bring that up! As you know, it was well before my time... you need to ask Guy Oder about that one since I believe he worked on that car. Whatever the specifics of that particular situation (and for sure it was something that was going to be beneficial to Penske), the basic tenet remains that Penske employs his drivers - they don't hire the team.

Hey Nigel,

OK, I admit, that was a bit teasing.....
But I do agree with you and would have said so even without your statements: Penske rides are not to buy, most certainly not in the years of the Philip Morris sponsorship era, your era.

Greetings


henri

[Option1]

Nigel - Thanks for taking the time to fill us in with your great inside stories. Much appreciated.

Indeed! Thank you Nigel.

Neil

[Matt Hughes]

This is especially interesting as I've just finished watching through a complete set of the 1992 CART/IndyCar season races. Pretty exciting/dramatic year for Penske, what with Rick Mears reaching the end of his career, Paul Tracy being elevated to the main team and hitting the ground running (the move on Michael Andretti into Turn One in Detroit was fantastic) and such. Plus, the car looked utterly fantastic.

Not sure what it was like from the 'other side of the fence' as it were, but to a spectator/TV viewer it really comes across as a golden age in any kind of open wheel racing. Great circuits, beautifully-designed cars with lots of power, a wide mixture of legends and promising newcomers and some amazing racing.

So yes, thanks for your time and thoughts Nigel .

Edited by Matt Hughes, 02 August 2012 - 12:25.

[Tony Matthews]

@Matt Hughes - I had to dispose of all my taped CART races some years ago - I have no idea how or where I can replace them with DVDs - can you point me in the right direction?

[JacnGille]

Thanks a lot, Nigel, you can't beat this sort of 'Horse's Mouth' information.

[fan27]

Nigel, thank you for the detailed responses to my questions. It sounds like 1999 was a bit of a "filler year" in terms of drivers, as the aim was always to get Greg Moore and Gil de Ferran for 2000 - would that be a fair assumption? With Rodriguez making quite an impression on the team, do you think that it could have ended up being a 3 car team again, or a Rodriguez/Moore line up for 2000?

As you began the season with one driver, why did Penske move to two drivers from round 5? Was it to compare data on the cars (Penske vs Lola)?

Thanks again for your personal insite into this amazing time in IndyCar.

[Lee Towers]

Nigel, thank you for the detailed responses to my questions. It sounds like 1999 was a bit of a "filler year" in terms of drivers, as the aim was always to get Greg Moore and Gil de Ferran for 2000 - would that be a fair assumption? With Rodriguez making quite an impression on the team, do you think that it could have ended up being a 3 car team again, or a Rodriguez/Moore line up for 2000?

De Ferran and Moore were signed for 2000 early, it was announced August time - I think if Penske did want to hold on to Gonzalo it would have had be in a 3 car team..

[Nigel Beresford]

It's a reasonable question, but in truth running three cars in 2000 was never on the cards. The team was trying to re-establish itself with new cars, new drivers, new president, new tyres and new engines. When you go to from 2 to 3 cars it isn't half as much work again, it's twice as much. More spares, more personnel to hire and manage, more trucks.. more of everything. Penske Cars was fully occupied tooling up to make new suspension and tidy up the Reynards, and build a new wind tunnel model (a massive task) - a big enough job for two cars, let alone three. Short of Gonzalo proving to be the new Senna, it wasn't going to happen.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 02 August 2012 - 16:30.

[Nigel Beresford]

It sounds like 1999 was a bit of a "filler year" in terms of drivers, as the aim was always to get Greg Moore and Gil de Ferran for 2000 - would that be a fair assumption?

I don't think Roger went in to 1999 with that aim. He enjoys a challenge more than anyone, because it gives him a chance to achieve things other people would shy away from. He is also tremendously loyal to his sponsors and people, but he has never been sentimental about using his own car (or ditching it if he thinks he can get another, quicker, car). That is just good business sense. 1999 was the final shot at making the PC/AUJ/Goodyear/Mercedes combination work, and nobody was going to be given the opportunity of criticising Roger for not trying. As the year unfolded it became more and more apparent that we were flogging a dead horse and Roger became increasingly unwilling to listen to excuses from anyone, including the drivers. He'd been more than fair. I remember standing on the pit wall with RP in Toronto in 1999 watching qualifying, and de Ferran (driving for Derrick Walker at the time) grabbed a last minute pole by slowly and carefully bringing in his tyres and finding a gap in the traffic. It was an object lesson in a driver approaching the task with measured intelligence, rather than blatting around bouncing it off the walls. I don't know if Roger had already spoken to Gil at that point in time, but you could just tell that he (RP) was tremendously impressed by de Ferran's performance in that qualifying session.

[Nigel Beresford]

But what about the situation of Bill Alsup and ABDick sponsorship in the very eraly eightties?
Alsup was definitely not the kind of driver penske would hire because of his outstanding capabilities.
Do you know a bit about that too maybe? It is the most unusual driver Penske ever hired I think.

I had lunch today with a friend who was with the team at that time. He recalled that the AB Dick money paid for Mario's car that year, and because Alsup was associated with AB Dick he took over the drive when Mario was occupied in F1.

[Ross Stonefeld]

The de Ferran comment is interesting, because there was a nugget in Tracy's departure that impacted me at the time. I was 17 and just starting my (unspectacular)driving career and for a non-expert and non-insider Tracy going somewhere else was a big surprise. He was the guy who was winning that year, after all. But there was a line from Rick Mears about how Paul was only interested in where he was on the timesheets at the end of a session. For someone of my experience it seemed counter-intuitive but when it's spoken by a 4-time Indy winner you think about until you figure out what he meant.

If I can shift gears(oh the humour) to 2009, how difficult was it to go to three cars with Power? I assume you had time to prepare and plan for each outcome with the Castroneves situation, but it was seriously impressive the way you guys moved drivers and cars around during the Long Beach weekend without it showing up on the stopwatch.

[biercemountain]

Tony, the cutaway is of the PC27 as you say. The PC28 ("PC99") was very similar except for a 2" longer bell housing to improve the connection between the compressor outlet and the plenum, and a different brand of dampers. Otherwise I can't really remember what the mechanical differences were.

I remember one race circa '99 when ABC was going to do a segment showing the Mercedes and how it was packaged in the Penske. Turned out The Captain (or Mercedes) didn't want "that kind of attention" and the body work remained firmly affixed to the car.

Edited by biercemountain, 02 August 2012 - 16:51.

[ensign14]

*starts chanting "book book book book"

*realizes he sounds like a chicken

Alsup did get a good finish in the championship, but wasn't that more due to consistency than inspiration? I suppose at a time of upheaval in the sport he was at least a safe pair of hands. Until he DNQ'd at Indy...

[Ross Stonefeld]

I remember one race circa '99 when ABC was going to do a segment showing the Mercedes and how it was packaged in the Penske. Turned out The Captain (or Mercedes) didn't want "that kind of attention" and the body work remained firmly affixed to the car.

They're still on the ball about that kind of thing. At Iowa this year Ryan Briscoe got in the wall and they were working on the car in the garages mid-race. I have no idea if they really thought they could get it back out, but the camera crew was showing them going about their business and as soon as the mechanic noticed them get within a certain distance he tossed the nearest rag over whatever bit he wanted to keep invisible. I think rear dampers.

[Nigel Beresford]

The de Ferran comment is interesting, because there was a nugget in Tracy's departure that impacted me at the time. I was 17 and just starting my (unspectacular)driving career and for a non-expert and non-insider Tracy going somewhere else was a big surprise. He was the guy who was winning that year, after all. But there was a line from Rick Mears about how Paul was only interested in where he was on the timesheets at the end of a session. For someone of my experience it seemed counter-intuitive but when it's spoken by a 4-time Indy winner you think about until you figure out what he meant.

I worked as PT's engineer for all but one of his seasons at Penske, and I count him as a good friend. Karl Kainhofer used to call him "the spark plug that drives this place" in the early 90s. Rick is right; Paul (for all his undoubted intelligence, and he is anything but dumb) just didn't seem to grasp the opportunities provided - jeez, he had Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser Jr right there to observe and learn from, but unfortunately we just couldn't teach him a thing.

If I can shift gears(oh the humour) to 2009, how difficult was it to go to three cars with Power? I assume you had time to prepare and plan for each outcome with the Castroneves situation, but it was seriously impressive the way you guys moved drivers and cars around during the Long Beach weekend without it showing up on the stopwatch.

2009 was a very different situation. I had actually left Penske at that point, at the end of the Porsche ALMS program in 2008, and half of the crew were relocated within the IndyCar, Nationwide and Sprint Cup teams. The other half were kept on to do the Daytona Prototype program, which was kind of a sprat to catch a mackerel - Penske wanted to keep a group operating in sports car racing and associated with Porsche, so that he could keep his hand in with Weissach in case any opportunities arose. At one point there had also been a possibility of running Audis. The bottom line is, a group of guys who were already well used to working together after 3 years of ALMS racing was effectively available "off the shelf", and I was effectively parachuted in to Long Beach from the UK to handle the race engineering part once it became clear Helio was cleared. To say it was satisfying to get the pole at Long Beach is obviously an understatement, and winning the Edmonton race was phenomenal.

To this day managers, mechanics and engineers from the ALMS team form a very significant part of the structure of the IndyCar team.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 02 August 2012 - 17:09.

[Rob]

I worked as PT's engineer for all but one of his seasons at Penske, and I count him as a good friend. Karl Kainhofer used to call him "the spark plug that drives this place" in the early 90s. Rick is right; Paul (for all his undoubted intelligence, and he is anything but dumb) just didn't seem to grasp the opportunities provided - jeez, he had Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi and Al Unser Jr right there to observe and learn from, but unfortunately we just couldn't teach him a thing.

Do you know the reason for his switch to Newman/Haas for 1995? It seemed a bit of a weird one to me.

[Nigel Beresford]

Do you know the reason for his switch to Newman/Haas for 1995? It seemed a bit of a weird one to me.

I don't actually know. I suppose he felt that he was going to be low man on the totem pole in a team with Al and Emerson, even though he was a more regular race winner than the latter. Also, it's expensive running three cars - a two car team was a more "natural" level for Penske. As noted before, the feeling was that Emerson would retire at the end of 1995, and so a one year deal with NHR made sense for Paul. All I know for sure is that when Paul came back for 1996 it was with the assurance of parity (in financial terms) with Al Jr.

[Henri Greuter]

I had lunch today with a friend who was with the team at that time. He recalled that the AB Dick money paid for Mario's car that year, and because Alsup was associated with AB Dick he took over the drive when Mario was occupied in F1.

Thanks Nigel for filling this one in , in addition to all the other things you share with us.
Since Penske always hired topline drivers, the Alsup assignment was indeed the most unusual one of them all for me.
But as ever, it was a matter of F.E.A.R. (For Everything A Reason)


Henri

[Patrick Morgan]

I can elaborate a bit on the engine side of this story although I'll qualify this by saying I was back and forth between CART, F1 and a disastrous year at University at the time so Nigel and others may be able to flesh out the detail and correct any errors.

As Nigel says the genesis of the problems of 1999 and as far as Ilmor was concerned 2000 stem back to 1997. Ian Watson had returned from Toyota bringing Hidehiko Tsuda and had been tasked to design a very compact engine for 1998 - the IC108E. The focus was to get the sump as narrow as possible to allow the underwing tunnels to be as wide as possible. Ian had done this before with AAR - his Toyota engine had been designed to have a narrow sump and integrate completely with the car and particularly the gearbox. That engine (the Toyota) was actually tapered so as the heads and sump were narrower at the rear than they were at the front.

To achieve this all the pressure pumps and the centrifuge were moved up into the centre vee of the engine - to describe the assembly as complex would be a wild understatement. Contrary to popular belief at the time, the 108E had a lower CofG than it's predecessor, the 108D - basically the last derivative of the 265A architecture. As Nigel rightly says the trade off was that inlet system development was extremely difficult as you had no room for manoeuvre. By this stage Andrew Hurley had been pushing very hard for a few years to up the capacity of the plenum and increase the diameter of the throttles in a quest for more top end - there was a belief (I would think Andrew would contest this - he is more in possession of the hard test results than I but this was the perception) that the drivability of the engines was adversely affected by this despite the power figures looking pretty good. By 2000 the drivers were referring to the power delivery characteristic as an elbow. In 2000 Ray Gosling, TK's engineer actually drove a car and came back saying that the drivers were not making it up - it was utterly un-drivable. I suppose the fact we thought they might be overstating their case probably gives an indication of the state of play at the time...

In late 1997 Steve Miller arrived from Cosworth to join Ilmor's special projects department. At this time he didn't have any involvement with the indy program as far as I can recall but I do remember him advocating the use of low mounted stream injectors. I do not recall if this system was already in development or not at the time but the upshot was that they worked rather well but there was no room to mount them directly onto the inlet port wall... so a complicated system of tubes was used to get the fuel from the injector to the port. It took a time for this system to make it onto a race engine.

I vividly recall talking with one of the Forsyth mechanics at Fontana in 1997 and him telling me they were really keen to see this wild new engine with its narrow bottom end and hard mounted plenum... we were trying to keep a lid on the technical features of the engine as far as possible but it seemed word had got out by that stage. My understanding is that at some point over the winter the width of the underwing tunnels were restricted which pretty much made the whole point of cramming the pumps into the vee a waisted effort. My guess is the other engine manufactures didn't want to incur the cost of going the same route if the new architecture worked. Nigel might be able to clarify this.

Just to make things more complex Penske were the only team to actually build a car around the engines concept. My understanding is that both Reynard and Lola (and actually I think we were talking to Swift at the time) had shown great interest in exploiting the narrow sump and added stiffness of mounting to the plenum but when it came to it the monocoques all turned out just as wide as the Honda, Toyota and Cosworth cars with a conventional mounting system. As a result we had to run duel inventory of bits like cam covers... and that meant heads as well as the cam cover was line-boared with the head. Where normally the different specs of engines for different cars was limited to stud lengths and looms we were now into a completely different top end. I forget whether it was 1996 or 1997 but a desmodronic head was also in the mix to counter Honda's deal with NHK for better valve springs than what was available to us. My guess is by the time the 108E came online the desmo head had been abandoned.

The other big change was the switch to Magnetti Marelli electronics. The Marelli logging system was terrific - I still think the best I've seen in terms of being intuitive to use. The control systems were not so good (you fixed an issue with the pit speed limiter and suddenly you had no boost control - that sort of thing) but the real issue was the hardware which I think in the early days Marelli had sub'ed out. At spring training 1998 bags of frozen peas were used to keep the ECU's cool and after not very long there were only 2 functioning ECU's available across 7 cars - I'm sure RP wanted them both! Not to bash Marelli whom I have a great deal of respect for (they have won a good few championships) - but as an amusing aside all their hardware came with a big yellow sticker saying "DO NOT PUT THIS ITEM NEAR HEAT OR VIBRATION". Oh dear!

All this was happening when Ilmor started to win in F1. Up until 1997 the message coming from Mercedes on that program was largely "we don't care if the engine fails as long as it fails in the lead..." which was fine up until we started leading races but not finishing them. I think it's fair to say that Ilmor engines from 1984 - 2001 were always designed on the edge a bit - Mario's preverbal Swiss watch. The pace of development was very fast at this point and I don't think it would be unfair to say Mercedes and Mario's attention was more in F1.

Despite all this the 108E is probably my favourite engine - it's aesthetically wonderful to look at, every mm of space is used, the plenum looks like and atom bomb and there was a lot of innovation. The PC-27 is just the same. I've got a great photo of the engine which I'll endeavour to scan and post. In 2000 I ran a car for Luiz Garcia - the prime car was 2000 spec fitted with the 108F and the spare was a '99 car fitted with the 108E. By that stage the E was reliable and at the time I was always glad to be able to run the '99 car as you could get through a practice session without re-filling the water system endlessly, wiping up oil or changing motor.

As a last note around mid/late 1999 I was working day and night on the PADI exhaust system for the F1 engine. This was an "active" exhaust system that used butterflies in the collector to boost midrange torque. Getting it to work was a bit of a game but it raced from 1999 - 2001. I was scheduled to attend a test with the latest version featuring hydraulic control (it was previously pneumatic as the Ilmor F1 engines ran a compressor at that time in order to run variable rate valve springs) and Gonzo was down to drive it while fitted to the MP4-14. Laguna was, I think, the previous weekend to the test but certainly within our little group he was considered a very exciting prospect. It was a great shame and came in a year of seemly unending difficulties and deaths. For us the final blow was the announcement that Penske was switching to Honda. I remember sitting in the Fab shop pummelling the latest PADI collector back into round when the news was announced. Knowing how loyal Roger had always been to his people it was a really gut wrenching moment but ultimately I think the change did both sides a lot of good and by the time we came together again in 2001 for Indy relations were much better. Penske had had some results after a drought and we had had a good kicking in 2000 which probably we needed to get reorganised and focused again.

Edited by Patrick Morgan, 03 August 2012 - 12:03.

[Tony Matthews]

Well, thank you to Nigel, and now Patrick. This is fascinating information, the sort that makes motor racing so much more interesting, and unfortunately the sort that rarely gets into the public domain, and is completely ignored by the (non-specialist) media. Ta.

[B Squared]

Well stated Tony, and many thanks to Patrick for his input.

[jcbc3]

I find this very interesting but I think you guys have too high demands of the non-specialist media if you expect them to report on stuff like this.
However, the specialist media could and should give this kind of stuff their utmost attention. But do we really expect some engine guy moving from Renault to Ferrari to spill the beans in real time? However fascinating we think it would be.

(I really like the word 'however' I just realised).

[Patrick Morgan]

There is also that thing of not washing your dirty laundry in public if you can avoid it. Certainly not at the time anyway!

[Nigel Beresford]

There is also that thing of not washing your dirty laundry in public if you can avoid it. Certainly not at the time anyway!

Indeed. I've been careful to be respectful as far as possible to the people involved, even after a decade and a half. We all make mistakes, and those are the things that we learn from.

Your comments about Mario's (and presumably Paul's ) engine design philosophy are interesting. They designed the engine to be at the limit from the start, and then fixed failures as they occurred, rather than starting out with something heavy and trying to lighten it up. As you well know, it's far easier to lighten something at the design stage rather than trying to do so after it has come in to existence.

Edited by Nigel Beresford, 03 August 2012 - 13:46.

[Henri Greuter]

Indeed. I've been careful to be respectful as far as possible to the people involved, even after a decade and a half. We all make mistakes, and those are the things that we learn from.

Your comments about Mario's (and presumably Paul's ) engine design philosophy are interesting. They designed the engine to be at the limit from the start, and then fixed failures as they occurred, rather than starting out with something heavy and trying to lighten it up. As you well know, it's far easier to lighten something at the design stage rather than trying to do so after it has come in to existence.

@Nigel, it always amazes me how much you manage to tell without offending anyone and still give so much of an inside to all of us who enjoy matters like this. Please keep on going doing this good work.


Henri

[Nigel Beresford]

For what it's worth, I always thought the 1997 Ilmor "D" engine was fantastic - it was somehow the perfect package - very reliable, powerful and economical. The 108E had a tough act to follow.