Cup Championship Proves Elusive For “The Captain”

Roger Penske- a.k.a. “The Captain”- has won 22 National Championships, including 12 in Indy Car and15 Indy 500’s. This despite boycotting Indy during the early years of the CART- IRL
split.

Penske is by far and away the most successful owner in the long, history of the Brickyard. Besides Indy Cars, he’s won championships in SCCA, USRRC, Trans Am,  and ALMS series. One place he hasn’t been able to win it all, has been in NASCA Cup competition. This despite 1,141 starts and 61 victories. That spot in his trophy case remains vacant.

In his early years in Cup- he, like most owners ran a single car operation- while only running part time. Roger first tried the NASCAR waters in 1972 campaigning an AMC Matador. Penske and Mark Donohue were fresh from winning the ‘71 Trans Am Championship with an AMC Javelin, so I suppose the Matador was a carryover. Ah, for pre- unicar days. He ran 12 races with Bobby Allison, Mark Donohue and Dave Marcis.

He opened the ‘73 season with his first win with Mark Donohue at Riverside, running a total of 10 races that year. 1974 saw a total of 14 races, with Bobby Allison winning the final at Ontario. In ‘75, Penkse ran a total of 19 races, all with Bobby Allison, winning three.

1976 saw Roger Penske running his first full season. The first race in the Matador, before switching to a Mercury for the rest of the season. The ‘76 season produced no wins. The Mercury did prove more reliable than the Matador, which showed an unfortunate tendency for losing engines.

1977 saw him dropping back to a part-time schedule- running 12 races with Dave Marcis. Three races were run in Mercurys, the rest in Chevrolets. His next races weren’t run until 1980, when Penske ran 2 races with NASCAR newcomer Rusty Wallace. Roger didn’t run another Cup race until ‘91 when he again teamed with Rusty.

They ran the entire schedule in the Blue (sometimes black) Deuce with sponsorship from Miller. This pairing lasted 14 years, until Rusty retired after the 2005 season.

Some fans new to NASCAR, knowing Rusty was a Cup champion,
might assume that he won his championship driving for Roger.
In fact, Rusty won his Cup championship driving for Raymond Beadle in 1989. Rusty’s best season with Rodger was ‘93, when they won 10 out of 30, but lost the Championship to Dale Earnhardt, by 80 points. Rusty and Dale had several exciting Championship battles, even without the Chase.

Imagine that.

Together, Rusty and Roger won 37 races, but were never able to nail down a Championship. Penske added a second team in 2001 with Jeremy Mayfield. Rusty proved to be less than the ideal teammate. He seemed to think that the purpose of a teammate was to help him win. He never seemed to work with the 12 car and team, either on or off the track.

Rusty retired, the 77 car was added,dropped, and added again. Kurt Busch stepped out of his Roush Ford during his season as defending champion, (a very curious deal). Through all of this Roger has never been able to come as close as he did in 1993.

Team Penske is now the entire Dodge contingent. At one time, they were on the cusp of a Championship. To get back to that position, they have a lot of catching up to do.

The 12 team, after winning Daytona, in 2008- a first for Team Penske- has struggled since. As well as Kurt ran this year, and with Brad Keselowski coming on board next season, it should be an interesting year- with Brad running a full Cup schedule and NNS schedule. His progress might surprise a lot of people.I would love to see Team Penske in position to actually win the chase, rather than fighting just to make it.

For someone with Roger’s organizational skills to have tried this long without winning a championship shows just how tough it really is. Even though some people have been making it look easy lately.