And that started, I think, my journey. Then we went to the race, and the speed of the cars, you know, the ambiance, the excitement, and then my interest in cars alone, and in Indy, and in the names and the people who used to race at Langhorne and in Trenton. Those were areas close to where I lived, so I could go see those races. It was amazing, you know.
People have asked me that question for a long time. Roger, after all those years in racing, who were the five greatest drivers you ever saw? Well, that's not an easy question to answer. I've spent most of my life around race cars, and I've been fortunate enough to watch some remarkable people come through this sport: Formula 1, IndyCar racing, sports cars, Indianapolis. I've seen different generations, different machines, and very different kinds of drivers.
I started as a driver myself. So, naturally, I looked at certain things: how a man controlled the car, how quickly he understood what it was doing. Later, when I became a team owner, I started noticing other things: how he worked with the engineers, how he handled pressure, what happened when the car wasn't quite right and he still had to find a way to compete. That's where you really learn about a driver.
The stopwatch can tell you who's fast. The results can tell you who won. But when you've spent decades watching these men work from inside the sport, you remember things that aren't always written in the record book. I could give you more than five names, certainly, but if you're asking me which drivers have stayed in my mind after all these years, well, I've got to start with Mark Donohue.
Mark was one of the most intelligent drivers I ever worked with. He understood a race car at a level that very few people did, and I recognized that pretty early in our relationship. I first got to know Mark back in the 1960s. He had studied engineering at Brown University, and you could see that background in the way he approached racing.
When Mark came back into the garage, he didn't simply tell you that the car felt good or bad. He could explain what it was doing, where the problem was coming from, and what we might change to improve it. That was enormously valuable to me. We were building our organization in those years. We were competing against experienced teams, and every advantage mattered.
Mark was willing to test, work with the mechanics, and keep going until we understood the car. He had patience for that kind of work. But once it was time to race, he was very quick. People sometimes remember the engineer and forget the driver. Mark could compete in very different machinery: sports cars, Trans-Am, Can-Am, Indy cars. He didn't approach those cars exactly the same way because he understood that each one required something different from him.
Indianapolis in 1972 remains one of the moments I remember most clearly. Mark was driving our McLaren, and he brought Team Penske its first victory in the Indianapolis 500. That meant a great deal to our organization. We had gone there trying to establish ourselves, and suddenly we had won the biggest race in American motorsport.
Then we had the Porsche 917/30 program in Can-Am. That was an extraordinary machine with tremendous power, and Mark was exactly the kind of driver you wanted developing it. He understood what the engineers were trying to accomplish, but he also understood what the driver needed when all that power had to be controlled on the track. In 1973, he won the Can-Am championship.
Losing Mark in 1975 was very difficult. He had returned to Formula 1 with our team, and after his accident in Austria, we lost somebody who had become an important part of my life as well as our organization. I worked with many great drivers since then, but Mark was there when we were learning what Team Penske needed to become. He helped establish the standard, and I've never forgotten that.
Now, Mario Andretti. Mario was one of those drivers who could climb into almost anything and find a way to be competitive. I watched him for many years, and what impressed me was how quickly he could understand what a car was asking from him. Mario came through an era when drivers moved between different forms of racing. He raced on dirt tracks, ovals, and road courses. He drove Indy cars, sports cars, stock cars, and Formula 1 cars.
Those machines had very little in common. But Mario had the ability to adjust without losing the thing that made him fast. From a team owner's standpoint, that tells you a great deal about a driver. Mario had a natural feel for a race car. He could recognize what the car was doing underneath him and communicate what he needed. He had strong opinions, certainly, but I never minded that.
If you're going to put somebody in a race car and ask him to operate at the limit, you want him to tell you exactly what he thinks. I watched Mario establish himself in American racing during the 1960s. When he won the Indianapolis 500 in 1969, nobody around the sport was surprised that Mario Andretti had become an Indianapolis winner. By then, we already knew how good he was.
What impressed me even more was that he kept looking for new challenges. Mario could have stayed in America and had a tremendous career. Instead, he wanted to test himself in Formula 1. That meant different circuits, different cars, different teams, and a completely different environment. He accepted all of it. Then, in 1978, he won the Formula 1 World Championship with Lotus. I respected that enormously.
Winning in one form of racing is difficult enough. Mario proved that his ability could travel with him. I also had the opportunity to have Mario drive for our organization in IndyCar racing. By then, he'd already accomplished more than most drivers ever would, but he still took the work seriously. He wanted the car prepared properly. He expected good information from the engineers, and he gave good information back. That's something I've always valued.
I've watched racing become much more specialized over the years. Drivers today often grow up concentrating on one particular path. Mario came from a different generation. You could put him in almost anything with four wheels, and somehow he'd figure out what it needed. That was Mario. He was a racer in the fullest sense of the word.
I've got to mention A.J. Foyt. A.J. was one of the toughest competitors I ever saw. You didn't have to spend much time around him to understand what racing meant to him. When A.J. climbed into a car, there was never much doubt about why he was there. He wanted to win. I knew A.J. from my own early years in motorsport, and I watched him compete through several different periods of American racing.
He came through midgets, sprint cars, and dirt tracks, and that background gave him tremendous car control. He was comfortable when a car moved around underneath him, where another driver might have become cautious. A.J. seemed to understand how much movement he could accept and still keep going quickly. That ability followed him everywhere. A.J. could race Indy cars, stock cars, sports cars, and machines that required completely different techniques.
He didn't need everything to feel perfect before he could be competitive. He understood machinery, and he knew how to work around problems. I respected that. He could also be demanding. A.J. had strong opinions about how a race car should be prepared, and he wasn't afraid to tell people what he thought. But he demanded just as much from himself. That's an important distinction. When somebody expects excellence from everyone around him, he'd better be prepared to provide it himself. A.J. did.
Indianapolis showed that better than almost anywhere. He won the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in 1961. He won again in 1964 and 1967. Then came 1977. By that point, A.J. had already been competing at Indianapolis for many years. The cars had changed. The engines had changed. The competition had changed. But A.J. was still there, still capable of winning.
When he took that fourth Indianapolis 500 victory, he became the first driver ever to win the race four times. That told me something about him beyond speed. You don't remain competitive at Indianapolis across that many years without adapting. You have to understand what has changed while holding on to the instincts that made you successful in the first place.
From the other side, trying to beat A.J. was never comfortable. If he was still around near the end of a race, you knew you had a problem. He understood how to survive difficult races and put himself in position when it mattered. A.J. and I came from different backgrounds, and we approached racing differently, but I always respected him. He was tough. He understood race cars, and he never forgot that the purpose of going racing was to win.
Then there's Rick Mears. Rick was quiet, very calm, and never somebody who needed a lot of attention around him. But once he got into a race car, you could see immediately how much control he had over what he was doing. We brought Rick into our organization in 1978. He wasn't arriving as a famous driver with everybody expecting great things from him. We saw ability. We saw somebody who listened carefully, learned quickly, and had a very natural understanding of the car.
What I liked about Rick was that he never seemed interested in proving how brave he was. He wanted to go fast, but he understood that going fast and looking dramatic were two different things. Indianapolis suited him. That track rewards drivers who can feel small changes in the car. The wind can change. The balance can change as the fuel burns away. The tires don't always behave the same way through a run. Rick was very good at recognizing those things before they became serious problems.
He won his first Indianapolis 500 in 1979, only his second start in the race. Then he won it again in 1984. Later that year, Rick had a terrible accident at Sanair in Canada. His feet and legs were badly injured. At that point, nobody could simply assume that he would return and become the same driver again. But Rick worked his way back. That's something I always admired about him.
Coming back from a serious accident isn't only physical. Eventually, you have to sit in the car again, build your confidence, and trust yourself when the speed comes back. Rick did that without making a great show of it. In 1988, he won Indianapolis for the third time. Then, in 1991, he came back again at 41 years old.
Late in that race, Michael Andretti was right there with him. Michael passed Rick for the lead, and Rick responded by passing him back. At that stage of an Indianapolis 500, with everything at stake, Rick remained composed and finished the job. That became his fourth victory at Indianapolis. I've always believed pressure reveals something about a driver. Rick had tremendous speed, certainly, but what separated him was the way he managed that speed.
He knew when the race required patience and when it was time to take the opportunity. I watched him grow from a young driver into one of the greatest Indianapolis ever saw. Rick never needed to tell anybody how good he was. He showed us.
One driver I could never forget was Ayrton Senna. I had watched Ayrton in Formula 1, of course, and everybody in racing understood what he could do. But I had an opportunity to see something different when he drove one of our Indy cars. That happened in December of 1992 at Firebird Raceway in Arizona. Emerson Fittipaldi helped bring the opportunity together. Ayrton came over and drove the Penske PC-21 that Emerson had raced during the season.
Now, an Indy car of that period was very different from the Formula 1 machinery Ayrton knew. The tires were different. The brakes were different. There was no power steering, and the car demanded a different kind of physical effort. That's what made the test interesting. When you put a great driver into unfamiliar equipment, you get an opportunity to see how quickly he can understand something new.
Ayrton didn't have months to become comfortable with that car. He had to listen, feel what it was doing, and begin making adjustments almost immediately. And he was quick. But the speed itself wasn't the only thing that impressed our people. Ayrton was trying to understand the car. He paid attention to what it was doing and communicated what he was feeling. That's something I've always valued in drivers.
A stopwatch tells you the result of a lap. It doesn't tell you whether the driver understands how he got there. Ayrton understood. There was also something fascinating about seeing a Formula 1 world champion interested in IndyCar racing. By 1992, Ayrton had already won three Formula 1 world championships. He had nothing to prove about his ability, yet he was still curious enough to climb into a completely different race car and see what he could learn from it. I respected that.
The test never became an IndyCar racing program for Ayrton. He returned to Formula 1, and we all know how his story ended in 1994. But I've been around this business long enough to know that sometimes you don't need years with a driver to recognize something unusual. Ayrton had tremendous speed, but plenty of drivers are fast. What stayed with me was how seriously he approached something unfamiliar. He wanted to understand it.
I've always believed the greatest drivers have that quality. They don't assume the car has to adapt to them. They learn what the car is asking. And Ayrton Senna could learn very quickly.
Well, when you spend a lifetime in racing, people naturally want you to put names in order. I understand that. Everybody wants to know who was the fastest, who was the toughest, who was the greatest. But after all these years, I don't think about it quite that way anymore. I've seen racing change enormously. I've seen different cars, different technologies, different tracks, and generations of drivers who had to solve completely different problems.
What made a great driver in one period wasn't always what made somebody great 20 years later. That's why five names can never tell the whole story. There were many others I could have mentioned: people I competed around, people who drove for us, and people I simply had the opportunity to watch. Every generation produced somebody who made you stop and pay attention.
What stays with me now isn't really the record book. It's the people. The preparation, the conversations in the garage, the sound of the engines starting before a race, watching somebody climb into a car knowing exactly what was expected of him. I've been very fortunate to spend my life around people like that. And when I think about the greatest drivers I ever saw, that's the part I remember most.
