How Roger and Mario Broke the Indy 500 - (Penske “Beast” V-8, 1994) -- It's Not the Car #18

To borrow a line from this episode, “this is a great story because it’s got Paul Tracy melting his feet off and a bunch of stuff blowing up and Mario Andretti sits on his porch giving the stink eye at one point.”
(The Mario in the headline is not that Mario. That’s a different Mario. Headline Mario was Swiss.)
(Digression: Headline Mario sounds like the worst Nintendo game. “Hey, Timmy! Come by my house after school! We can play Headline Mario and eat Cheez-Its!”)
(Timmy: “Uh . . . I have to . . . wash my hair?”)
(What would that game even be, really? Like, Mario and Luigi save the world from a giant jerky turtle monster by doing… journalism? What would the spinoffs look like? “You guys! I got the red shell in Headline Mario Kart! Now I can murder another kart with a single split infinitive!”)
(I should probably be telling you what’s in this episode, right? Ah well, too late, we’ve used up too much space already. It’s a corker, though, I promise.)
This show’s format rotates weekly, because squirrel. This episode is our monthly deep dive into an epic moment from racing history-in this case, the top-secret, hyper-rad moonshot project that three very clever men built to absolutely destroy the 1994 Indianapolis 500.
The cool part: They actually got away with it!
Related Trivia: Did we mention that SAM HAS A NEW BOOK OUT? It’s called “Smithology.” Available now on Amazon in print and as a Kindle e-book. It is far better written than the episode descriptions for this show. (Though that's admittedly . . . not saying much.)
This episode was produced by Mike Perlman.
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ABOUT THE SHOW:
It’s Not the Car is a podcast about people and speed. We tell racing stories and leave out the boring parts.
Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver and an internationally renowned performance coach and author. Jeff Braun is a championship-winning race engineer. Sam Smith is an award-winning journalist and a former executive editor of Road & Track magazine. Together, we explore the emotion at the heart of the machine.
We don’t love racing for the nuts and bolts-we love it for what it asks of the bag of meat at the wheel.
New episodes every Tuesday.

[@lawrencecunningham7971]

The Beast is a great story. Love the discussion. But the racing gods had their chuckle in 1995 when Team Penske fails to qualify for the 500. Then the split happens and 6 years later Penske comes back to Indy and wins 3 500’s in a row.

[@BSNFabricating]

"Is it illegal?" No...but it's against the spirit and intent of the rule..." "Let's do it." It's a fascinating story... I have vivid memories of that time. They need to make a movie about it.

[@bretbauer7582]

Anyone in racing that worries about the "intent" of the rule. Is ok losing.

[@CSpray]

Great analysis, particularly from the people standpoint. Having been at the epicenter of the project, I can offer you more insight on what happened behind the scenes once we got to the Speedway. (Chuck Sprague)

[@MrTL3wis]

They need to get Guy with you. Who else?

[@vinewood8295]

Man if you were alive and were watching back then that was one magical month of May at Indy, my only regret is that Emmo crashed, I wish they'd finished one, two. I recorded the race on VHS off ABC back then...

[@viscountslappy5085]

Sam's monologues are the best!

[@racingmaniacgt1]

This is one of my favorite stories in motorsports history, can't wait to hear you guys talk about it.

[@racingmaniacgt1]

It's like the D-Sport Racer story but at Indy 500 level...

[@user-hi5pf6ty8d]

Great episode. I just found you guys.. will continue to follow

[@anthonycasson]

Fantastic! Also, love hearing about the book recommendations - never quite sure what are the worthwhile reads out there in the motorsport space

[@lawrencecunningham7971]

The Beast by Jade Gurss is a brilliant book!

[@jasoncombs8385]

I just finished reading "The Beast" a few weeks ago, so it was great to see this discussion so close to me finishing the book.

[@tbh791]

The Buick/Menard V6 and Mercedes 500I V8 Indy engines were 3.4L (209 cubic inches)

[@jamiedoellinger6962]

Not to be forgotten in this was the fact that IMS had an extreme make-over leading in to 1993 where the apron was sodded over, essentially making the race line longer. Team Penske had the intention of gaining more HP to account for the slightly longer straights.

[@georgedreisch2662]

With the advent of CAD, CFD, additive manufacturing, CNC machine tool technology, and metrology, I don’t find it hard to imagine a group of people with access to those technologies, especially, if available “in house”, within a backing company, accomplishing the same or greater, given the leadership to initiate and drive forward, a project concept. Thinking it would all come down to leadership, especially, from involvement at the front. Y’all need to take up Chuck Spague on his offer to relate his insiders perspective.

[@19KiloM1A1]

Forgot that there was snow on the track when we got there

[@vinewood8295]

I think what Roger did was the absolute most badassed thing ever cause ya know Indy was a track that was built on run what you brung cars. I wasn't alive in the 60's to see the ill fated Granatelli cars, specifically the turbine BUT that's the kind of deal I love seeing at Indy or any racetrack or series. Is continuously working to try to make the car better & faster. These "That's Not Fair" people are those kids who cried after every loss on the little league diamond back then when the opposing team had an overgrown kid they found out in the countryside that could throw fire across the plate. Current IndyCar racing sucks because of this whole same chassis & current engine rules, they oughta go back to letting them build their own chassis in shop & allow them to build their own engine as long as it's the right cubic inch according to rules & 6 or 8 cylinders, just throw a Chevy or Buick badge on it like the Menard back in the day and let's go racing....

[@MilesCobbett]

What year did Roger win the first 5 spots all with Toyota engines?

[@robertsklenka5823]

I think to get the full jest of the deal is to have at least done something a kin to the same. A very tiny parallel was Karting back in the 80’s 90’s. Just walk through the pits and admiring the innovative ideas using your own ideas. What a wonderful thing that it had to be to be a part of that Penske operation. I have learned to be selective in who i would even attempt to tell this story to..why because unfortunately most people don’t get it..they just don’t. Sadly they want to only relate the story to racing ..not to life.

[@davidthompson5460]

I saw Ross Bentley race what was even then an old sports car in 1996 at Texas World Speedway. Flat bottom Ferrari 333 driven by Mad Max DNF, and a pushrod Ford won.

[@andrewprentice8857]

The '94 Indy Penske still leaves me with mixed feelings. First off, it is still one of my favorite racecars, as far as looks are concerned. I think it looks absolutely beautiful, especially in Indy 500 configuration, with the bigger rear bodywork! The "unfair" advantage that won for them in '94 met with karma in the '95 Indy 500 when they could not qualify for the race. The CART/IRL split happened after all of this and I think it would be foolish to suggest that Penske's '94 Indy 500 domination was not a factor in the split.

[@ryhuck5383]

It wasn’t because Penske went with them 😂

[@jasonkoestner4630]

Sweetest sounding engine I ever heard at Indy back when they had real cars top technology now it’s a joke a cars the same both engines about the same need the technology new cars and engines like it was in the late 80s and 90s

[@bruces3613]

Roger Penske (with other team owners) formed CART, exploited the pushrod loophole and broke Indycar racing in half, competed with Indy with the US 500 on Memorial Day at his own track, then was the first team owner to abandon CART for the IRL, and now owns both the IMS and Indycar. Holy shit

[@sdsmt99]

I think Fuzzy Hulman George Carpenter Vision broke indycar in half. If only RP bought the whole thing 25 years earlier we'd all be better off.

[@earlybirdearlybird1371]

@@sdsmt99 NO ! Penske is a cheater since he have his own team. Money Money Money and no sports please.

[@DrDiff952]

The irony is that he owns IMS and IndyCar

[@de-fault_de-fault]

The writing was on the wall for the split before this happened. You could say it was the final insult (taking USAC's attempt to force the Buick V6 to be a viable equivalency formula and throwing it back in their face) but Tony George felt he was put on this earth to avenge the "horror" of racers running a racing series (CART) instead of baking powder magnates running a racing series (USAC), and he was going to find whatever he could to make it happen. He actually had a valid point in the early '90s when he expressed concerns about keeping costs in check, and if he had worked with the teams on that instead of trying to impose a whole agenda of "let's go back to the bad old days Dan Gurney wrote about in the white paper, but it'll be good this time, I promise," maybe he would have gotten somewhere. Instead we continue to have the worst of all possible worlds: a championship where all the focus is on one race and even then it's not promoted as well as it could be so there's not a lot of sponsor interest and not a lot of money coming in (USAC) but at the same time costs are too high for the little guys to compete (CART) and boring spec cars rule the day (IRL).

[@bruces3613]

@@de-fault_de-fault Well with Tony George put of the picture we don't have to worry about disgruntled team owners and the 28/5 rule again. Oh wait

[@stephendrake8145]

The”Beast” was a superior engine in an inferior car so once the engine was banned the following year the basically same car with the same engine as everyone else failed to qualify & by a large margin. The 1952 Cummins Diesel & the 1967 & 1968 STP Turbines were satisfactory engines in vastly superior cars…

[@sdsmt99]

It was an upbeatable car everywhere else with the same engine every one else had. But it had a flaw at Indianapolis The Beast disguised.

[@de-fault_de-fault]

The problem with this narrative is that Penske dominated the entire 1994 season even with the unbranded Ilmor D engine (successor to the Chevy Ilmor C engine from 1993) in the CART events, which was considered inferior to the Cosworth XB. And then in 1995 they won 6 of 17 races with the now-Mercedes-branded Ilmor D, against even tougher competition on the engine side because Honda came into its own, and on the chassis side as Reynard emerged as the favorite. Both the PC23 and PC24 were good cars, but if you dig deeper into the story they somewhat lost the plot on chassis setup for Indy 1995 based on spurious tire test data and weren't able to recover.

[@precesionnoreaster1507]

I think spec racing will slowly kill racing, there eill be no more stories, and car guys don't really like it anymore

[@andrewprentice8857]

I'm not so certain of that. Right now, Formula 1 is (arguably) the most "non-spec" of the world's leading racing categories, with a long history of innovation. Yet F1 is utterly dominated by one team, with perhaps another two which are slightly competitive with them. The racing of F1 is possibly the most unexciting anywhere in the world today. It is dominated by technology, which is almost unaffordable, to any but a few teams. I am saying this as a resident of a country which is 100% F1-devoted. It is worshipped as the best motorsport in the world, even though it has the least competitive racing. I actually prefer and welcome the "spec" approach of Indycars.

[@donaldgarvin9885]

These guys are interesting in the story they tell but it's like way too freaking long so it's like you want to hear it but just get to the point

[@tbh791]

Jade Gurss's book BEAST is the best motorsport book I've ever read next to Mark Donohue's Unfair Advantage.

[@markconner6078]

Great story that I wanted to hear, but you made it hard to watch. Sorry.

[@deantait8326]

So many words yet so little information …. Ah The Penske Advantage! And auto racing has become a “spec” sport and losing interest