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How Penske ended its longest drought, 20 years on

Today marks 20 years to the day since Gil de Ferran's victory at Nazareth ended a 54-race drought, the longest in the history of Team Penske. Here's how it got itself out of the mire that threatened to scupper one of Indycar's greatest teams

James Newbold May 27, 2020, 3:16 PM

Team Penske is a giant of modern motorsport. A perennial contender for championships in all three US series it competes in - including the 2018 NASCAR Cup and 2019 IMSA Sportscar Championship - it has won three of the last four IndyCar Series titles, with Josef Newgarden's second championship last year extending its total to 16. Simon Pagenaud's victory at the Brickyard last year gave Roger Penske his 18th Indianapolis 500.

Even with the coronavirus crisis delaying the start of the IndyCar season until June and shrinking the number of races from 17 to its current 14, it seems inconceivable that such a storied outfit as Penske - which scored its first Indycar win with Mark Donohue at Pocono in 1971 - could end 2020 without a victory, let alone next year and the year after that.

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Author James Newbold

James Newbold is Autosport's Plus Editor, responsible for coordinating website feature content.

In a sign of things to come, having completed his Politics and International Relations degree at the University of East Anglia in 2015, he left his graduation ceremony early to catch the last train to Brussels for the following day's Spa 24 Hours.

After a period as a freelancer, he joined the Autosport staff in 2018 and won the Motorsport UK young journalist of the year award. He initially edited Autosport magazine's Performance and Engineering supplements before joining the website team in his current role in 2020.

A keen enthusiast of anything that can be categorised unusual or niche, he enjoys unearthing little-known stories across all branches of motorsport, but has spent most of his career covering sportscars and is a regular part of the Le Mans 24 Hours reporting team.

He lives with his wife and children in Plymouth, England.