Palou profits from Newgarden heartbreak
It was in 1999 when Team Penske last went a season without scoring an Indycar win. It was a 20-race season, and Al Unser Jr scored the team’s highlight – a fifth place at Cleveland. The former champion and two-time Indy winner had missed three races through injury, while his team-mates, be they Tarso Marques, Alex Barron or the late Gonzalo Rodriguez, were in at the deep end. The team was not so much treading water but drowning. Back and forth between an update of its handsome but winless Penske PC27 from 1998 and the Lola B99/00, the team was also saddled with Mercedes engines and Goodyear tyres, at a time when Chip Ganassi Racing was proving that the combo to have – for the fourth straight year – was a Reynard chassis, a Honda powerplant and Firestone rubber. Roger Penske is to be respected for his loyalty and his watertight contracts are to be respected, but at that point they were costing the team results.
This, the 2021 IndyCar Series season in which Team Penske has yet to
