1981 Penske PC-9B

The Geoff Ferris-designed Penske PC-9 and PC-9B competed in the 1980 and 1981 IndyCar seasons, along with the 1980 to 1982 USAC Champ Car seasons. It won the 1981 Indianapolis 500 with driver Bobby Unser, and driver Rick Mears won the 1981 CART Championship.

Team Penske made its racing debut in 1966 at the 24 Hours of Daytona, and they would go on to compete in numerous other series including Formula One, Trans Am, Can-Am, IMSA SportsCar Championship, IndyCar Series, NASCAR Cup Series, FIA World Endurance Championship, and Australia's Supercars Championship.

Before team founder Roger Penske became a constructor, he was an accomplished driver; Sports Illustrated named him SCCA Driver of the Year in 1961. He competed in two Formula One Grands Prix and won a NASCAR Pacific Coast Late Model race at Riverside in 1963. Penske retired as a driver in 1965.

Roger Penske's involvement with IndyCar began in 1968 when his team fielded a stock block-powered Eagle with driver Mark Donohue. Their first assault on Indianapolis was in 1969, when Donohue was named Rookie of the Year. Donohue scored the first win for Team Penske in IndyCar at the 1971 Pocono 500, and he won the team's first Indianapolis 500 in May 1972.

During the early 1970s, Penske Racing competed in Formula One with cars of their own design and construction, featuring an aluminum monocoque chassis and Ford Cosworth engines. The Penske PC1, PC3, and PC4 were Formula 1 cars; the PC4 is remembered for scoring the last Formula One win for an American-licensed constructor in an F1 race.

The Penske PC-5 was Penske Racing's first USAC Indy car, and like its predecessors, was designed by British designer Geoff Ferris. This was the first time Penske used their own chassis at the Indy 500, and the first car to reach a qualifying single-lap record of over 200 mph (320 km/h) at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Penske PC-6 was a USAC and CART open-wheel race car that won the 1979 Indianapolis 500 with diver Rick Mears. The PC-7 was a CART open-wheel race car that competed during the 1979 season.

Like its predecessors, the Penske PC-9 used an aluminum monocoque chassis with a Cosworth (DFX) V8 engine. The mid-mounted, longitudinally placed unit displaced 2,650cc (161.7 cubic inches) and was paired with a Hewland LG500 four-speed manual transmission. The suspension was comprised of inboard springs and Fox shocks at the front and rear, lower wishbones, and an anti-roll bar.

Technology and design was advancing rapidly throughout motorsports, with breakthroughs in one racing series quickly adapted to others. Team Lotus pioneered ground effect aerodynamics on their Formula 1 cars during the late 1970s, and other teams took notice, implementing these advanced designs in their own cars. Jim Halls Chaparral 2K, penned by John Barnard and driven in 1979 by Al Unser, is credited as being the first ground-effects Indy Car, but the Penske PC7 was also on the grid that year from the first race of the season. The difference between these two vehicles was the 2K was a clean sheet design while the PC7 was an updated version of the PC6 with the addition of side pods.

Experimental ground effect technology made a convincing argument during the 1979 season, convincing Roger Penske that it did have a future. Geoff Ferris was instructed to create a new car for the 1980 season - the PC9. The design had the engine and gearbox acting as fully stressed members of the chassis, and the in-board suspension helped funnel air to ground effect tunnels. Full-length sliding skirts helped seal the underbody duct, preventing this flow ingress and helping to maintain a low pressure under the car. Ferrari was awarded the Louis H. Schwitzer Award for the best racing car design in 1980.

Team Penske list of drivers for the 1980 season included Rick Mears, Mario Andretti, and Bobby Unser. Both Rick Mears and Mario Andretti scored a victory in their PC9, and Unser scored four wins. The USAC Championship, however, was won by Chaparral's Johnny Rutherford who had five victories, including the Indy 500.

Development and fine-tuning of the PC9 resulted in the PC9B for the 1981 season. It would score seven victories in the eleven-race CART series, and won the USAC-sanctioned Indianapolis 500. Mears was the CART Championship.

Bobby Unser, in his last Indy 500 appearance, won from the pole and claimed his third Indy 500 victory and the third overall for Team Penske. Unser's other victories were in 1968 and 1975, meaning that each of his victories occurred in a different decade. The 1981 race had a near-record 24 lead changes between nine drivers, and Unser's Norton Spirit Penske/Cosworth led on eight separate occasions for a race-high total of 89 laps.

The morning after his victory at Indy, Unser was notified of a penalty which meant the victory was awarded to Mario Andretti. Unser had passed cars on the pit exit while the race was under yellow, ensuring a one-position penalty. Team Penske protested and Unser was eventually reinstated as winner in October following a 2-1 vote by the USAC appeals board.

When the PC9 and PC9B were retired for the 1982 season, they were replaced by the PC-10, which is considered the most dominant Penske race car design ever. It won the Louis Schwitzer Award for innovation and engineering excellence, and Rick Mears and his #1 GOULD CHARGE car (red-blue-white) won the CART Championship.

by Daniel Vaughan | Jan 2025