What might have been

Team Penske enjoyed a long spell at or near the top in CART-sanctioned Indy car racing as a constructor and, for the most part, the sole entrant of its own cars, taking its first series title in 1979, with further titles in 1981-’83, ’85, ’88 and ’94.

Penske Cars in Poole on the south coast of England was responsible for the design and build, engines aside, and Team Penske ran the cars out of its Reading, Pennsylvania base in the USA. The well-resourced F1-style operation thus enjoyed the luxury of being able to design and engineer its cars for just its own drivers rather than a number of customer teams. But after those five titles in the 1980s, only one more as a constructor followed in a dominant 1994 season that saw 12 race wins. The 1995 season produced five wins, 1996 was winless, and there were just three early season victories in 1997. On that purely statistical basis the operation seemed to have passed its zenith.

The car that took those last three wins in 1997 was the Nigel Bennett-designed PC26, which, according to this magazine’s Class of ’98 special feature (V8N5), could trace its origins back to the successful PC22 of 1993, and the mildly altered and dominant PC23 of 1994. But then Bennett, who had been with Penske Cars since 1988, decided he was going to retire, so in 1996 John Travis was hired from Lola to work alongside him for a year before becoming chief designer for 1998, and pen the PC27.

Indy beginning

Travis is these days busy re-forming his consultancy company after working for Wirth Research, but in 1996, on his arrival at Penske, he was initially involved with the PC25 and PC26. The PC25 was the 1996 car, while the PC26 was being designed for the 1997 season.

Travis’s first impressions of the Penske organisation were mixed: ‘The factory and the people in Poole were second to none but the technology was behind. When