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Power Rankings: The 15 best drivers in Team Penske history

Nick Bromberg
·College football and motorsports writer

Brad Keselowski’s win at Las Vegas on Sunday was the 500th victory for car owner Roger Penske across all forms of major motorsports. Those wins span the top two levels of NASCAR, IndyCar, CART, sports car racing, Australian Supercars and even ARCA. Sorry Steve Wallace and Travis Kvapil, your ARCA wins weren’t enough for consideration on this list.

In honor of Penske hitting a half-thousand, here’s a special edition of Power Rankings where we rank the 15 best drivers who have visited victory lane for the team.

15. Emerson Fittipaldi (11 wins): Fittipaldi won the 1993 Indianapolis 500 after leading just 16 laps. He was just 16 laps away from going back-to-back in 1994. Fittipaldi came to Team Penske in 1990 after winning the 1989 CART title and finished in the top five in his first five seasons with the team.

14. Bobby Unser (11): The older Unser brother won 10 CART races for Penske in 1979 and 1980. He finished second in the standings both seasons despite an average finish of 3.8 in 1979. He won six of 14 races that season and had nine podium finishes. His 11th victory for the team came in the 1981 Indianapolis 500.

12. Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas (16): Bernhard and Dumas won their 16 races for Team Penske teamed together in the now-defunct American Le Mans Series from 2006-2008. The two co-drove a Porsche Spyder for Penske and got wins at Road America, Long Beach, Mid-Ohio, Laguna Seca and other famous road courses.

11. Scott McLaughlin (15): McLaughlin has been fantastic since joining Penske’s Australian V8 Supercars team. He’s won those 15 races over the last two seasons for the DJR Penske team though he hasn’t won the title in either of those seasons. He was second to Jamie Whincup in 2017 and second to Shane van Gisbergen in 2018.

10. Danny Sullivan (12): Sullivan won his dozen Team Penske CART races from 1985-1990. His first win or the team came in the 1985 Indianapolis 500, a race you may remember as the spin and win. Sullivan lost control of his car but didn’t hit anything when it spun around after making a pass for the lead.

9. Al Unser Jr. (12): Unser Jr. has won two Indianapolis 500s. His 1992 win over Scott Goodyear is one of the most memorable in history though it didn’t come for Team Penske. His 1994 one did and it’s fair to say that he shouldn’t have won that race to begin with. Emerson Fittipaldi and Unser Jr. had the race’s best cars by far that day but Fittipaldi was clearly faster than Unser. Fittipaldi led 148 laps and had the field covered before he hit the wall with 16 laps to go and Unser took the lead. Unser went on to win the seven more races and the championship that season.

8. Ryan Newman (24): Newman delivered Penske the team’s first Daytona 500 win with a last-lap pass of Tony Stewart in 2008. The win came via a push from teammate Kurt Busch as well. Thirteen of Newman’s 18 Cup Series wins came with Penske. He won eight races and 11 poles in 2003 but still finished sixth in the standings.

7. Joey Logano (29): Logano has a better Cup Series win rate than Rusty Wallace with Team Penske and has a Daytona 500 win to his name with the team. Logano is still just 28 so there’s a very good chance he’ll be a lot higher on a similar list when the definitive history of Team Penske is written. He’s won 17 Cup Series races since joining the team in 2013.

6. Rusty Wallace (37): Wallace is so far down the list for a couple of reasons. His 1989 Cup Series title came two years before he joined Team Penske and he never won the Daytona 500 or Southern 500 while driving for the team. He’s boosted, however, by the fact that all 37 of his Penske wins came in the Cup Series, including 10 in a remarkable 1993 campaign that saw him finish second in the points standings to Dale Earnhardt.

5. Will Power (32): Power’s now a member of an exclusive club of drivers to win an IndyCar title with Roger Penske as well as an Indianapolis 500. The defending Indy 500 champion led 49 laps in May to get his first victory in the race. He won three races in 2018 — including the Indianapolis Grand Prix — and should be a title contender for the foreseeable future in the IndyCar Series.

4. Helio Castroneves (32): Castroneves is a three-time Indianapolis 500 champion and desperately wants another chance to be the fourth driver to win four 500s. Somewhat surprisingly, Castroneves never won an IndyCar title though he finished in the top three in the standings a remarkable seven times. The three Indy 500 wins break the tie with Power even if Power has the IndyCar title that Castroneves doesn’t.

3. Brad Keselowski (59): Keselowski’s next win will make him the winningest driver in Team Penske history. It could happen as soon as this year. Thirty-three of those wins have come in the Xfinity Series, but Keselowski delivered Penske his first Cup Series title in 2012, his first Brickyard 400 win two weeks ago and also the team’s 500th win on Sunday.

2. Rick Mears (29): Mears gets the No. 2 spot by virtue of his four Indianapolis 500 wins. He won at Indy in 1979, 1984, 1988 and 1991. Three of those four victories were from the pole. He’s one of just three drivers to win four Indianapolis 500s. He also won CART championships in 1979, 1981 and 1982. Mears competed in all or parts of 14 CART seasons for Penske and won a race in 12 of them.

1. Mark Donohue (59): The New Jersey native won Penske’s first Indianapolis 500 in 1972. His speed record set in the race lasted until 1984. He also recorded Penske’s first NASCAR win when he won at Riverside to open the 1973 season and is one of the most versatile drivers in American motorsports history. Donohue died the day after a Formula 1 practice crash in 1975 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

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Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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