Penske has long-awaited 10th title

Mike Harris

Thursday, Nov. 2, 2000 | 5:30 a.m.

Roger Penske never lost his competitive edge. He just had bad luck and used the wrong equipment for a while.

Now, the winningest car owner in open-wheel history has another title.

And with CART champion Gil de Ferran and hard charger Helio Castroneves as his new tandem of stars, the long-awaited 10th Champ car title looks like the start of a new era for Penske.

"It's a tremendous achievement for us," the 63-year-old entrepreneur said of his record eighth CART championship.

Who could have guessed a year ago - after Penske Racing's season ended in disappointment and tragedy - that the team would have such success in 2000?

A second straight year without a Champ car win was bad enough. But there also was the fatal crash of rookie Gonzalo Rodriguez.

Then, budding star Greg Moore, hired to team with de Ferran this year, was killed riding for Gerald Forsythe's team.

"Not winning races is embarrassing, but the other part, Gonzalo and Greg, those are things that can drive you out of the sport, the tough times to manage through," Penske said.

But the head of a multibillion-dollar business empire with 38,000 workers wasn't about to throw up his hands and walk away. Even though he hadn't come close to a championship since Al Unser Jr. won in 1994 as part of a 1-2-3 team sweep, Penske believed he could get back on top.

"I kept telling people that Penske Racing was not dead," The Captain said in a determined voice. "People were saying I'd lost interest in the team, was too involved in my other businesses to pay attention to racing.

"But that's just not true. Inside I knew I was fired up just as much as I've ever been. If I didn't start a season thinking I could win the championship, I wouldn't be the guy leading this team."

That inner fire would certainly explain the momentary show of emotion for the usually controlled Penske after de Ferran clinched the championship with a third-place finish Sunday in Fontana, Calif.

As de Ferran got to Victory Circle, tearful over his first major championship, Penske gave the Brazilian driver a bear hug, holding him for several moments and beaming with pride.

De Ferran is the driver who finally gave Penske his 100th Champ car victory, in Nazareth, Pa., in May - three years and three days after Paul Tracy last won in a Penske car.

"You know, they pay you for what you do today," Penske said. "I'm sitting there trying to get that 100th win and then you blow through that and start getting poles and wins and now the championship."

De Ferran, a successor to former Penske greats Unser Jr. and Sr., Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan and Mark Donohue, takes pride in wearing the uniform because of their accomplishments.

"When Roger Penske hired me, I felt the weight of all those people. It was a heavy burden because I wanted so much to be part of helping to win more championships with this great team," de Ferran said. "And I wanted to get Roger Penske back to where he belongs - at the top."

The team wound up with de Ferran winning five poles and two races, and Castroneves adding three poles and three victories.

Midway through 1999, Penske decided a major change was needed, and de Ferran was just one piece of the puzzle.

Besides new drivers, the team began 2000 with Tim Cindric as its president of racing and lots of new personnel. Penske also switched for the first time to a Reynard-Honda-Firestone combination of chassis, engine and tires.

He had used an in-house chassis and a Mercedes engine that never proved the equal of the fast Hondas. Goodyear tires were outrun by Firestones and dropped out of the sport this year.

"He didn't just tear a corner off the envelope, he saw he needed to shred it and start over," Cindric said of Penske. "It wasn't immediate, but eventually everything just meshed and we were going in the right direction."

The change actually did bring immediate results, with de Ferran winning the team's first pole in more than two years at the season-opening race in Homestead, Fla.

"That gave us a big lift as a team," Penske said. "It told everybody we were on the right track."