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b. 1937

Roger Penske

Team owner of the championship Trans-Am Camaros

Roger Penske
Roger Penske Photo: Ted Van Pelt, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Roger Penske's Sunoco-sponsored team, with Mark Donohue driving, turned the Z/28 into a genuine championship car, winning the SCCA Trans-Am manufacturers' titles for Chevrolet in 1968 and 1969. Donohue's book The Unfair Advantage describes the team's rules-stretching preparation (the acid-dipped “Lightweight” 1967 car) and its sub-two-minute pit stops.

Penske later drove a Camaro pace car at the 2016 Indy 500.

Penske gave the Camaro method more than engineering. His team ran Trans-Am as a professional operation in a field that was still substantially amateur, with real preparation and testing discipline and a willingness to read the rulebook as carefully as the racing line.

The nickname that followed the team, "The Unfair Advantage," was about that method rather than any single trick, though its reputation for creative rule reading is inseparable from it.

Sunoco/Penske Trans-Am Camaro tribute
Sunoco/Penske Trans-Am Camaro (tribute car) Photo: TaurusEmerald, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Original photograph License

The full account of those seasons, including what is and is not established about the team's more contested preparation stories, is in the racing history.

The Trans-Am partnership
The Trans-Am partnership Penske: Team owner; Donohue: Driver and engineer; Z/28: Competition car. The Camaro team won Chevrolet the 1968 and 1969 manufacturers’ championships. The roles belonged to different people, rather than one designer-driver. Penske Team owner Donohue Driver and engineer Z/28 Competition car
The Camaro team won Chevrolet the 1968 and 1969 manufacturers’ championships. The roles belonged to different people, rather than one designer-driver. Original CamaroFacts diagram. History and sources.

Did you know

  • Penske was a Chevrolet dealer before he was a Camaro team owner. He became manager of a Chevrolet dealership in Philadelphia in 1963, bought it in 1964 and retired from driving in 1965.
  • Team Penske's first race was the 24 Hours of Daytona on February 6, 1966, and it was a Corvette, not a Camaro. The No. 6 Sunoco Sting Ray, driven by Dick Guldstrand, George Wintersteen and Ben Moore, won the GT class by 27 laps, finishing the night with flashlights taped where its headlights had been.
  • The Camaro's first big result for Penske came in 1967, when Donohue won at Marlboro Motor Raceway, followed by two more wins that season. Then came ten wins in 1968, and in 1969 six for Donohue and two for Ronnie Bucknum.
  • Penske is credited on the series' own history page as one of the founders of the International Race of Champions, established in 1973 with Les Richter and Mike Phelps. The Camaro later became IROC's spec car.
  • Born February 20, 1937, in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Penske graduated from Lehigh University in 1959. Sports Illustrated named him SCCA Driver of the Year in 1961, and he drove in two Formula One Grands Prix in 1961-62 before turning to team ownership.
  • He has been inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America (1995), the International Motorsports Hall of Fame (class of 1998) and the NASCAR Hall of Fame (2019), and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2019.
  • He made his name in sports cars: he won the Nassau Tourist Trophy in a Corvette Grand Sport and, in 1964, the Nassau Trophy in a Jim Hall Chaparral. The Hall of Fame also credits him with beating A.J. Foyt on the last lap of the Governor's Trophy, and his Zerex Special was a wrecked Formula One car rebuilt as a two-seat sports racer.
Sources for these details

Key beats

  • 1968–69 Trans-Am manufacturer's titles for Chevrolet
  • The acid-dipped “Lightweight” Z/28
  • Left Camaro for AMC in 1970, then Porsche Can-Am