INDIANAPOLIS — This was sometime in late April, during the puzzling month-long gap in the NTT IndyCar Series calendar.
Four weeks is too long for any racing series to go dark, especially in an age when the average American has the attention span of a Jack Russell terrier.
On the bright side, May 1 fell smack in the middle of that gap and May means Indianapolis, so the IndyCar faithful — from team members to local barstool bums — at least had plenty to talk about.
“I see Penske is struggling,” one guy said over lunch, and he said it with a smile.
Some people enjoy it when Goliath stubs his toe. I hate to argue over a meal, so I just nodded. It was all nonsense, and I knew that. Truth is, he probably did too.
Yes, Josef Newgarden’s victory in the series opener at St. Petersburg was Team Penske’s only triumph in the first four races. Yes, it was nice to see a couple of underdogs — rookie Colton Herta at Circuit of The Americas and Takuma Sato at Barber Motorsports Park — get things right on days when Roger Penske’s juggernaut got things wrong.
But after the first four races of his season, Newgarden had a win, two runner-up finishes, a fourth and a nice lead in the standings.
And while Penske’s other two drivers hadn’t fared as well, it’s worth noting that their best days had been plagued by trouble.
No one was in Will Power’s league at Circuit of The Americas, but a drivetrain failure left him parked in the pits. Simon Pagenaud’s weekends at St. Pete and Austin were scuppered by qualifying-session red flags that left him lining up 13th and 22nd.
But Pagenaud’s race pace had been fine; some of his passes were breathtaking. Power had started every race in the top three. And Newgarden had the league’s best blend of speed and consistency. Yeah, some struggle.
Every now and then, people tell themselves that Penske is slumping, because, deep down, that’s what they hope to see. And, without fail, Team Penske crushes those hopes.
Team owner Roger Penske brushes off praise for his accomplishments, in racing and in business, by quoting a favorite old saying of his dad’s: “Effort equals results.”
And why not? That motto says a lot in just three words, and Roger Penske is not one to waste time with small talk.
But if those three words explain his success, I’ve got a bunch more — 201, to be exact — that account for why so many folks begrudge him his glory. They come from a famous Cadillac ad entitled “The Penalty of Leadership.”
It ran just once, more than a century ago, in a 1915 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. It carried no photos or illustrations, no pricing or technical data, and the only mention of the Cadillac name was a small logo. Its text said everything and this was some of it:
“In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.
“When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. …
“The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy — but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.
“There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions: envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains the leader. …
“That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.”
Among racing people, that clamor of denial takes the form of a guy grinning and declaring over his noontime French fries that Team Penske is going through a rough patch.
That fellow is best ignored, because in modern-day American motorsports, Roger Searle Penske remains the gold standard.
The smart people in the sport understand this. It’s impossible to read the line in that Cadillac ad that says “the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership,” without thinking of Chip Ganassi and Michael Andretti, who will admit they have attained their team-owning prominence by studying, following and sticking to the Penske model.
That model amounts to this: Hire good people, stay the hell out of their way and keep finding the money to keep everything rolling.
Down through the years, every team owner who wanted to win big in IndyCar — or in CART, or on the old USAC Championship Trail — watched how Al Dean did it, or A.J. Foyt did it, or Vel Miletich and Parnelli Jones did it, or Carl Haas and Paul Newman did it.
In the modern era, there has been only one man to study. Roger Penske leads, period.
If you think he’s struggling today, watch him win tomorrow.