Team Penske Secures 600th Win

It took in excess of 50 drivers 55-plus seasons to give Roger Penske his 600th victory as a team owner, eclipsing any other American motorsports organization in the process. Team Penske, now in its 56th year of competition, achieved that milestone win on Sunday, March 20, 2022 – the first day of spring – on the 1.5-mile Texas Motor Speedway 1.5-mile oval, when Josef Newgarden passed teammate Scott McLaughlin on the final lap of the XPEL375 NTT INDYCAR SERIES race to break through for the auspicious win and for his own 18th checkered flag in the open-wheel series.

Sunday’s victory elevated Newgarden to Team Penske’s Top 10 winning driver list, joining Brad Keselowski (67), the late Mark Donohue (59), McLaughlin with 49 victories, NASCAR’s Rusty Wallace and Joey Logano, currently tied at 37 wins with INDYCAR’s Will Power, Helio Castroneves (36), Rick Mears (29), Ryan Neman (24) and Newgarden.

Anyone who’s been actively following Team Penske’s INDYCAR activities will remember the length of time it took for the team to secure its 100th victory; Team Penske now owns 224 wins in the series, easily eclipsing the 134 wins in NASCAR’s premier Cup Series and 81 in Xfinity competition. McLaughlin is the primary reason Penske has 56 Australian Supercar wins with Mr. Penske’s Dick Johnson-affiliated team. In IMSA, Team Penske owns 32 victories while in Trans-Am there are 30 trophies.

Team Penske’s early activities in both the Canadian American Challenge Cup and the USRRC (US Road Racing Championship) has yielded 15 and 12 wins, respectively, while the team has six ARCA victories and four FIA World Endurance Championship wins. In Formula 5000, Penske earned two wins, the same in USAC stock cars, while it claims a single Formula 1 World Championship and a single FIA crown.

The previous decade was Team Penske’s most successful, with 231 victories notched, followed by the 2000s with 111 wins, the 1990s with 71 wins, 55 so far this decade, 54 in the 1970s, and a tie for its first decade, the 1960s and the 1980s, with 39 wins. Interesting stats, aren’t they? The track where Team Penske has been most successful is one it currently owns: Indianapolis Motor Speedway, where the team has visited Victory Lane a total of 29 times, followed by Michigan International Speedway, which Penske once owned and Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, tied at 26 wins, Pocono Raceway (24), Texas Motor Speedway with 19, 18 for Watkins Glen International, Bristol Motor Speedway and Phoenix Raceway, while Richmond and Laguna Seca each have anointed 15 Team Penske winners, among the 92 winning tracks in total.

The bulk of Team Penske’s victories over the past half-century have come in North America (533), while the fairly recent decision to enter the Australian Supercars series has paid off well with 58 wins down under. In South America, Team Penske has four wins, it has taken three wins in Europe and has won twice in Asia. Of its North American tallies, 394 victories have come in the United States, with California leading the way with 49 wins; in contrast, Georgia (17) is the site of the least victories among the team’s top-15 states in which Team Penske has scored victory.

Team Penske’s first victory was secured on February 6, 1966 by drivers Dick Guldstrand, George Wintersteen and Ben Moore, who came from 21st on the Rolex 24 atDaytona grid to earn class victory in the No. 6 Sunoco Chevrolet Corvette, on the Daytona International Speedway’s road course. They won in the GT class, a victory they’d repeat two months later in the 12 Hours of Sebring. Mark Donohue brought Penske win No. 50 on July 18, 1971 on the Michigan International Speedway banked oval, while Bobby Unser followed with the 100th victory at Indy May 24, 1981, a win that was protested before being authenticated.

Win No. 200 went to Paul Tracy on May 25, 1997 at what is now WorldWide Technology Raceway, when CART ran against the Indy Racing League’s Indianapolis 500. It was three years later, April 9, 2000 when Gil de Ferran finally took Penske’s 100th INDYCAR victory – a two-year wait between No. 99 and 100 and it took Ryan Briscoe’s victory on the Milwaukee Mile on June 1, 2008 before Team Penske secured win total No. 300.

Brad Keselowski’s career with Team Penske included many milestones. He was the first Penske NASCAR Cup Series champion, delivered win No. 400 on September 6, 2014 at Richmond Raceway, earned Penske’s milestone 100th NASCAR victory in the July 2, 2016 race on Daytona International Speedway’s high banks and secured win No. 500 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on September 16, 2018. In between Keselowski’s achievements, Will Power took Team Penske’s 200th INDYCAR win on May 12, 2018 on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course.

Team Penske’s 200th NASCAR victory came courtesy Austin Cindric, whose August 8, 2020 Xfinity Series victory on the 4-mile Road America road course helped the driver to his 2020 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship. Team Penske’s 599th and 600th victories both came in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, the first with Scott McLaughlin, who won his first Indy car race in St Petersburg last month, while Josef Newgarden took No. 600 on Sunday, March 20, 2022 on the Texas Motor Speedway 1.5-mile oval after a last-lap battle with McLaughlin.