Roger Penske built his racing organization from modest roots into the benchmark of American open-wheel professionalism. The team made its Indianapolis 500 debut in 1969, where driver Mark Donohue earned Rookie of the Year honors, and claimed its first 500 victory in 1972 with Donohue at the wheel. Penske was among the co-founders of Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) in 1978, alongside Pat Patrick, Dan Gurney, and other leading team owners, forming the new sanctioning body in response to ongoing disputes with USAC.
The Marlboro sponsorship that defined the team's visual identity began at the 1989 Indianapolis 500 and became the primary sponsor across all Penske IndyCars from 1991 onward. The red and white livery became instantly recognizable in American open-wheel racing and placed the team in the same visual tradition as Marlboro-backed Formula One programs at McLaren and Ferrari.
Through the late 1980s and 1990s, Team Penske assembled a roster of elite drivers including Rick Mears, Emerson Fittipaldi, Paul Tracy, and Al Unser Jr. Mears alone won four Indianapolis 500s driving for Penske (1979, 1984, 1988, 1991), a figure matched only by teammates Al Unser and Helio Castroneves in the team's history.
The 1994 CART season stands as one of the most dominant single-season performances in American motorsport. Powered by the Penske PC-23 chassis and the Ilmor-built Mercedes-Benz 500I engine, the team exploited a regulatory loophole intended for stock-block pushrod engines by fielding a purpose-built 3.43-liter pushrod unit producing an estimated 900 to 1,000 horsepower. Drivers Al Unser Jr., Paul Tracy, and Emerson Fittipaldi combined for 12 wins from 16 races, 10 pole positions, and 28 podium finishes. At Indianapolis, the Penske cars occupied the front of the grid and dominated, with Unser Jr. winning after Fittipaldi clipped the wall in the closing laps. The team swept the Drivers', Constructors', and Manufacturers' championships. The engine was subsequently banned, and the following year Penske failed to qualify a single car for the Indianapolis 500, a stunning reversal that underscored how much the team had depended on the advantage.
Philip Morris's Marlboro brand funded the team's most celebrated chapter. The tobacco restrictions imposed by the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement forced the removal of explicit Marlboro branding from the cars beginning in late 2005, though the red and white color scheme persisted as a visual homage. By 2007 the Marlboro logo had been eliminated entirely, and in 2010 Philip Morris USA formally ended its nineteen-year association with the team. Penske transitioned to a black and white livery with red trim under new primary sponsor Verizon Wireless.
Following the open-wheel split that removed Penske from the Indianapolis 500 between 1996 and 2000, the team returned in 2001 with Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran. Castroneves won immediately, and again in 2002, the second win mired in controversy when video evidence appeared to show Paul Tracy crossing the finish line ahead of Castroneves under a late caution flag. The result was ultimately upheld. De Ferran won the 500 in 2003 before retiring from driving.
Sam Hornish Jr. won both the 2006 Indianapolis 500 and the IndyCar Series championship in the first year of the team's Honda engine partnership. Will Power, who joined full-time in 2010, became the team's most prolific pole-sitter and won the IndyCar championship in 2014 after finishing runner-up three consecutive years. Simon Pagenaud won the 2016 championship. Josef Newgarden, signed in 2017, delivered back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2019 and consecutive Indianapolis 500 victories in 2023 and 2024, the latter making him the first back-to-back winner at Indianapolis since Castroneves.
Penske competed in Formula One as a constructor from 1974 to 1976, operating from a base in Poole, Dorset, England. The team's sole Formula One victory came at the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix with John Watson driving the PC4, making Penske one of only two American-licensed constructors ever to win a Formula One race. The team withdrew from F1 at the end of 1976 to concentrate on IndyCar.
In sportscar racing Penske fielded the Porsche RS Spyder in the American Le Mans Series from 2005 to 2008, winning the LMP2 class championships in 2006 and 2007. The team partnered with Acura in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship from 2018 to 2020, winning the DPi drivers championship in both 2019 and 2020. Penske and Porsche reunited for the LMDh era in 2023 with the Porsche 963 in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA.
Team Penske's 20 Indianapolis 500 victories are the most by any organization in the race's history. The team has secured 16 IndyCar Series championships and has competed in excess of 2,000 IndyCar starts. The Marlboro-era livery, spanning from 1991 to the mid-2000s, remains one of the most recognizable color schemes in American motorsport history. Roger Penske's organization set the professional standard for team operations in CART, earning a reputation for meticulous preparation that competitors measured themselves against. The Penske Racing Museum in Scottsdale, Arizona, preserves the team's history across disciplines.