![]() At the time of his release, Sullivan was just two seasons removed from winning the CART championship in 1988. It prompted Sullivan’s famous quote “When the music stops, Roger is always going to have a chair”. Many thought Danny Sullivan got a raw deal, when The Captain released him after the 1990 season – including Danny Sullivan. Other than those three notable exceptions (and there may be more that I didn’t think of), there are a lot more examples on the other side of the ledger to indicate that when a driver is asked to leave Team Penske, the end of their career is in the not-so-distant future. Tracy moved on to win another seventeen races, a CART championship and was within a close and controversial call of winning the 2002 Indianapolis 500. After going winless in 1996, then making disparaging remarks about his car and his Goodyear tires to the media in 1997, The Captain had had enough. He was essentially loaned out to Newman/Haas for the 1995 season, but returned to Penske in 1996. Plus, his demeanor morphed from college prep to a grunge punk, which never really meshed with Penske’s buttoned-up operation. Tracy was fast, but tore up a lot of cars. He was to have a partial schedule again in 1992, but the nagging injuries to Rick Mears from a practice crash at Indianapolis accelerated Tracy’s schedule. Crashing after three laps at Michigan and breaking his leg, he was not seen again until the last two races of the season at Nazareth and Laguna Seca. With his horn-rimmed glasses and prep haircut, Tracy looked more like an SEC frat boy about to wear a coat and tie to a football game, than a race car driver. Paul Tracy was a Penske prodigy, when he signed for a handful of races for the 1991 season. After his release from Penske, Sneva won eleven more races, his third Indianapolis 500 pole and the 1983 Indianapolis 500. However, when the 1979 season started, Sneva had been released and was driving for Jerry O’Connell. Although, he didn’t win a race, he won the championship again in 1978. “The Gas Man” gave Penske his first championship in 1977. He finished third in the 1992 Indianapolis 500 driving for John Menard then twelfth in his last 500, driving for Kenny Bernstein.Īnother exception was Tom Sneva. Unser was already fifty-three at this point. Unser drove another partial schedule in 1989 for Penske, as he finished twenty-fourth in the 1989 Indianapolis 500 and closed out his Penske career later that season with a seventh-place finish at Pocono – not counting a one-off at Nazareth in 1992, when he substituted for an injured Rick Mears and finished twelfth. History was made as Unser became the oldest winner of the Indianapolis 500 (a record that still stands today), and he also became just the second four-time winner of the race. When Danny Ongais crashed in practice and was unavailable for the 1987 Indianapolis 500 Al Unser was hired to fill his spot. Al Unser was cut loose from Penske after running a partial schedule in 1986, just one year after winning the championship in 1985. When a team has been in Ind圜ar for well over fifty years, you’ll always find a few exceptions to just About anything. There are a few notable exceptions to the post-Penske curse. ![]() There might be one or two race wins as the career winds down, but for the most part – when a driver is cut loose from Team Penske, they need to start planning for life outside of the cockpit. But when he decides that a driver’s best days are behind him – that driver is shown the door and rarely excels beyond his Team Penske days. Roger Penske has always been a good evaluator of talent – both behind the wheel and how a driver will behave outside of the cockpit. They were both essentially let go by Roger Penske. Helio Castroneves has already beaten the odds by winning his fourth Indianapolis 500 and having a fulltime ride this season, approaching the age of forty-seven.īut there is a pattern that Castroneves and his new and former teammate, Simon Pagenaud, both have working against them. When you look at the driver line-up at Meyer Shank Racing (MSR), you look at a couple of drivers that are trying to beat the odds.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |