Customer Reviews

Penske Racing Team: 40 Years of Excellence

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This book is the first history of the Penske Racing organization (outside of Mark Donohue's autobiography "The Unfair Advantage") that I know of. According to the author of this book, Roger Penske has turned down several opportunities to have "official" histories written. This history comes from a fan of the team, and it shows - sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad.

Early in the book, the author leans too heavily on quotes from other books. Mr. Hummel's writing style, however, is good and he usually keeps the reader interested in the story. The book also covers all the series that Penske Racing has been involved in from the very beginning, not just Indy Car and NASCAR as they are best known for today. It also contains what I think is the best explanation of driver/engineer Donohue's crash in an F1 car that eventually led to his death. But there is much missing information and many, many errors.

The section on the team's Trans-Am days is shorter than I expected. A lot of interesting and rule skirting things went on back then but not much is discussed. While their elevated fueling rig is mentioned, their rig which used dry ice to shrink the fuel (allowing more into the car's gas tank) is not. Using the same Camaro to qualify for two cars at the same race goes unmentioned. In another instance, their Camaro with a vinyl roof is discussed but the reason for it having said vinyl roof is not - they were cheating and had to cover up an over-acid-dipped roof.

But the biggest flaws are the inaccuracies in the book, such as saying that Mario Andretti in 1978 was the only American F1 champion in "over half a century." Well, what about Phil Hill in 1961? Stating that Peter Revson replaced Dan Gurney with Team McLaren in 1970 when he did not drive for them until 1971 and was with Lola in 1970. Peter Gethin replaced Gurney and Revson replaced Gethin.

The author has Denny Hulme exiting the 1972 Road Atlanta Can-Am race with a "mechanical problem." Yes, there was a problem, his car flipped over backwards while cresting a hill, but that would be aerodynamic - and catastrophic - not merely "mechanical."

A pair of photos of a Penske Mercury NASCAR stockcar are mislabeled as a Chevrolet. Tony Stewart is said to have driven in CART when he never did. The book states that Helio Castroneves got his nickname "Spiderman" from climbing the fence at Indy after winning the 500 when in reality that nickname came a year earlier when he won his first CART race and climbed the fencing at that venue.

Shall I go on? What worries me are the errors I wouldn't catch in the sections of the book I don't know a lot about, such as the team's F5000 and NASCAR days.

Another annoying error in the book is the constant misuse of the prefix "ex-", as in ex-US, to refer to a race outside the United States. That should be "non-US" as "ex-US" means the race was previously in the US and now is not.

Many of these errors must also be blamed on the publisher, Iconograph. Are there no editors working there? A good (heck, a mediocre) editor would have caught most, if not all, of these errors.

I really wanted to like this book, right up to finishing the last page, but I can't really recommend it. Certainly not for the seasoned or older racing fan. If you have only recently become a fan of auto racing and would like to know more about the Penske organization besides what they presently do in the IRL and NASCAR, this is a decent book to read. You'll learn about the team's roots. You'll learn about incredibly important former team members such as Mark Donohue and Rick Mears. But you won't have it all. And you unfortunately will also have a lot of incorrect information.

We'll have to continue to wait for a good history of what is one of, if not the most, successful and innovative teams in American racing history.

Roger Penske has been part of the years of motor racing that interests me the most, so as a fan of can-Am and Indy racing in the sixties and seventies I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to get a bit closer. Unfortunately the book leaves a lot to be desired. The shortcomings are to many - please check other reviews that state these errors. Unfortunately the USRRC and Can-Am parts are way to short and although a few new and interesting photo are published it dosen't make up for what you feel is missing. Mark Donohue participation in the Japanese one-off Can-Am/Group7 race at Fuji in 1968 being another unmentioned race. The major part of the book is taken up with the CART and IRL years and there I started to lose track and interest. Although the story must be told in some way it becomes irrelavant somewhere between page 131 and 252 who exactly finished where and why not in whatever race. We here miss variation and a few highlights that will grab the attention. we get to many "then they went to Michigan" or "a week later at Mid-Ohio". No sorry - I was disappointed.

The best non-fiction books are written by zealots, people whose lives are consumed by a subject. This author is clearly a diehard race fan, a dogged researcher, and a skilled writer.

Not having help from Roger Penske or his organization may have been a blessing since it forced the author to depend on independent sources for information and eliminated the possibility of getting captured by the Penske Team company line out of a sense of obligation to his sources.

The writing is almost wire service style - clear and concise. The organization is logical and easy to follow.

The appendix of Team Penske wins was excellent. An even better - and infinitely longer - appendix would include every race the team ever entered complete with cars, drivers, engines, finishing positions, and sponsors. The ultimate appendix would be a color coded monthly calendar of all the races Team Penske entered from 1966 through 1976 - Cam-Am, Trans-Am, USAC, Formula 1, etc. plus the concurrent development efforts, e.g. Donohue flying to Germany to develop the Porsche 917 between races.

This was a good book about the history of Penske Racing written by a big Penske fan. I was particularly interested in some of the material about their participation in some of the earlier series such as F5000, Can Am, USRRC and USAC instead of the later stuff and the book was very complete on all their endeavors. I got out my copy of the Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue to read along with to complement the info.

I would have liked to see more information about the Penske involvement in the IROC series which was one of my favorite race series having attended over 20 some IROC races at MIS and Daytona. I would have also liked to see more info about the race tracks like Michigan that were part of the Penske racing empire

I did think the author was a little biased aginst one of my all time favorite drivers, Gary Bettenhausen, and you could tell that Tom Sneva was one of his very favorites, but all in all a pretty good racing book on one of the top race teams of all time.

This book covers all of the great Penske moments in his career of racing. There are also coverage of Penske events not so well known. I would recommend this book to anyone who has interest in the details of behind the scenes racing in America.

OK, so I'm the author, but here is an excerpt from the review in the September issue of VICTORY LANE magazine:

"What you will find in this extremely well written and illustrated book is a fascinating and often inside look at the saga of racing, racing business, team building and fascinating people. Buy it, read it, share it with your non-racing friends!"