AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Organizers of the Formula One U.S. Grand Prix are set to announce the race will run in 2016 after months of speculation that financial troubles could force it off the calendar, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The Circuit of the Americas , which hosts the race near Austin, scheduled a Wednesday news conference. Track representatives have told local officials it will include announcing the U.S. Grand Prix will race, according to a government employee with direct of knowledge of the conversation.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly ahead of the official announcement.
The U.S. Grand Prix had been scheduled for Oct. 23 on Formula One's calendar with an asterisk "subject to confirmation" of an agreement between F1 and race promoters. The first race of the Formula One season is the Australian Grand Prix on March 20.
Financial terms between the track and F1 were not immediately known. Messages were left seeking comment from track president Bobby Epstein.
In previous years, track officials said they were promised $25 million per year for 10 years from the state's portion of the Major Events Trust Fund, public money spent largely to pay Formula One's commercial management for the right to hold the race.
“You must exceed expectations if you are going to be a winner.”– Roger Penske
When Clint Brawner, the legendary mechanic who ran the Dean Van Lines Special out of a small garage in Phoenix, needed a driver for the 1965 Indianapolis 500, he didn’t look at those following the traditional route in sprint and midget cars on dirt tracks.
Instead, Brawner’s attention was on a Lehigh University-educated Alcoa Aluminum sales engineer who had been winning sports car road-course races since the late 1950s, beating the likes of A.J. Foyt and Dan Gurney .
His name? Roger Penske.
But Penske declined Brawner’s invitation to take the Indy rookie test. Then 28, Penske had borrowed money to buy a Philadelphia Chevrolet dealership and couldn’t get insurance if he continued racing. So he stopped, despite winning three SCCA championships and more than 50 races.
It would not be the last time Penske stunned the automotive and motorsports industries with his bold, never-look-back, business-first decisions.
Today, Penske is chief executive of an international automotive and transportation services empire with about 50,000 employees, more than $25 billion in annual revenues and a personal net worth estimated by Forbes at $1.4 billion. Twenty-five of his 326 retail auto locations, representing 39 brands, are in Arizona. Penske Truck leasing operates more than 200,000 vehicles.
Penske is also America’s most successful racing team owner, with 424 victories – including a record 16 Indianapolis 500s – and 28 championships in nine series.
Meanwhile, Brawner turned to a young hotshot who was winning in every type of car he sat in.
His name? Mario Andretti .
"Mario did a better job than I could have done,” Penske said.
“I guess you could say it worked out OK for both of us,” said Andretti, who went on to become an Indy and Daytona 500 winner and national and world champion.
Penske quickly realized racing success could help sell products and enhance his image and those of his corporate partners. He believed a well-prepared and great looking car would win races, gain media attention and thus attract sponsors and customers drawn to Penske’s reputation for high quality and good service. The same applies today.
Penske Racing, originally housed in a one-bay garage in Newtown Square, Pa. , debuted with a Chevy Corvette winning its class in the 1966 Daytona 24 hours . In 2007 the IndyCar team moved from Reading, Pa., to Mooresville, N.C. , where all motorsports operations were combined in a 424,697 square foot factory, featuring Italian floor tile, on 105 acres.
In the early 1980s Penske turned down an offer to become Chrysler CEO. His multi-manufacturer relationships means Penske has raced different brands at the same time. In NASCAR, he campaigns Fords. In IndyCar, it’s Chevrolets.
“Roger cares about putting the right product on the road,” said Edsel B. Ford II , a company director. “It’s very much akin to Henry Ford , who wanted to create a Model T for the world. It’s the motivation and dedication to doing that, and that’s very much Roger.”
*****
“Effort Equals Results,” has long been a Penske motto.
Not even the Super Bowl can distract from his seemingly relentless pursuit of perfection.
Jim McGee, Brawner’s protégé, managed Penske’s IndyCar team from 1975-80.
“We were testing at Phoenix (PIR) on the Sunday afternoon of the Super Bowl,” McGee said. “We had a little portable radio on the pit wall, kind of listening to the game.
“He (Penske) went, ‘Get that thing out of here. We’re here to do a job and I don’t want any distractions.’ He wanted everybody to focus. He wants everybody to feel this is the most important thing in their life. That’s his way to motivate people.”
“He goes right to the person in charge and holds them accountable and says, 'Things have got to change,'” Wallace said. “He’s the type of guy who thinks everything is possible.
“He'll say, 'Let's learn from this. Let's not let it happen again.'”
Team President Tim Cindric said, “Roger is an eternal optimist. He’s a guy who keeps pushing and, for those who want to be a part of it, they enjoy being pushed.”
Penske saw his first Indianapolis 500 in 1951, when his father brought him from theirShaker Heights, Ohio , home. Penske recalled in a TV interview they had “lousy seats” and that he “could hardly see the cars going by.”
But, tellingly, another memory endured the passage of years and laps: “It was something about speed . . ."
The Penske Way was quickly noticed at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1969, when he first entered a car for Mark Donohue . Gasoline Alley, as the garage area is known, had never seen anything quite like the crisp clean shirts and pressed slacks worn by Penske crew members and the tile floor he had put down in their assigned garage. In 1994 Al Unser Jr. won when Penske capitalized on a rules loophole and partnered with Mercedes-Benz to build a pushrod engine with a significant horsepower advantage.
Shockingly, the following year, neither of Penske’s entries qualified for the 33-car field.
*****
Eighty-five drivers have raced for Penske, 44 winning at least once. The two most closely connected to him are Donohue and Rick Mears .
The moon-faced Donohue, with a crew-cut and a mechanical engineering degree from Brown, was regularly winning sports car races when he joined Penske in 1966.
Donohue, Team Penske’s all-time leader with 59 wins, used his engineering knowledge to develop the cars Penske entered in the SCCA Can-Am and Trans-Am road racing series plus NASCAR and IndyCar. Their technical innovations, meticulous preparation – and sometimes pushing the limits of the rules – came to be known as “The Unfair Advantage.”
Donohue and Penske won in their fourth try at Indy, in 1972, with a record average speed just under 163 mph that stood for 12 years until eclipsed by Mears. A few weeks later, however, Donohue suffered serious leg injuries when bodywork flew off the powerful Porsche Can-Am car he was testing. He made a successful return then decided to retire and become team president.
That lasted seven months until Donohue attempted a comeback to drive Penske’s new Formula One car and seek a world championship.
“Half of my friends tell me I am doing the right thing and half tell me not to do it,” Donohue said. “But Formula One is the ultimate challenge, it’s something I’ve always wanted. I know what I am doing . . . and I know what can happen.”
It did happen during practice for the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix . A tire puncture launched his car into a barrier. A blood clot was surgically removed from his brain, but Donohue never regained consciousness, and died at age 38. Penske was at his bedside and served as a pallbearer.
(The only other Penske driver to die in competition was IndyCar rookie Gonzalo Rodriguez of Uruguay , 27, in a 1999 crash at Laguna Seca Raceway .)
Mears – who wore a cowboy hat, long hair and mustache – seemed an unlikely Penske driver when they spoke during a Colorado motorcycle ride. Mears quickly cleaned-up his appearance and gave Penske his second Indy win in 1979. Victories in 1984, 1988 and 1991 tied Mears with A.J. Foyt and Al Unser as Indy’s only four-time winners.
Mears suffered severe leg injuries in a 1984 crash.
“The first thing Roger said to me,” Mears said, “‘Take your time. Do what the doctors tell you. Don’t rush it.’ That made all the difference. He put me at ease right away so I could focus on getting better. People didn’t know if I was going to walk again or not. He said, ‘It’s (car) here when you’re ready.’”
Mears retired after the 1992 season and remains a team consultant.
As a driver, Penske won a NASCAR race, in 1963 on the Riverside, Calif ., road course. In 1973 Donohue scored Penske’s first Cup win as an owner there in an AMC Matador .
It wasn’t until 1991, when Wallace and partner Don Miller came to him with Miller beer sponsorship, that Penske seriously began his pursuit of a NASCAR championship. Wallace won 10 races in 1993 but lost the title to Dale Earnhardt .
Keselowski lobbied Penske to hire Joey Logano as his teammate and Logano won “The Captain’s” second Daytona 500 in 2015.
“Penske to me was like being at the roulette table and watching it over and over again and not hitting the number that you feel it should hit,” Keselowski said. “You just know the odds are in your favor. It was just a matter of time.”
Penske shows no signs of slowing down even though he recently turned 79 and had a kidney removed several years ago.
Among many other ventures, he organizes an IndyCar event on Detroit’s Belle Isle , has his racing museum in Phoenix and a V8 Supercar team in Australia to promote his truck business there.
Mears concedes it’s hard to keep up.
“I always say, if you want to feel like a bum, follow Roger around for a week.”
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Formula One gave the go-ahead Friday to a new qualifying system in which drivers will be eliminated every few minutes, a change strongly opposed by four-time championSebastian Vettel .
Vettel said he spoke for the rest of the F1 drivers when speaking out against the new rule, which was unanimously approved in a meeting between stakeholders last month and ratified Friday at a World Motor Sport Council meeting in Geneva.
The three qualifying periods will remain in place, but instead of having the slowest drivers eliminated at the end of each session, they will be dropped one by one every minute-and-a-half.
Governing body FIA said the system will be ready for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on March 20.
"It's a little bit chaotic if a couple of weeks before the season you start to reinvent certain rules," Vettel said. "I'm speaking on behalf of the drivers. No driver is (a fan). "
The first section of qualifying, known as Q1, will run for 16 minutes with the first driver dropped after seven minutes, with the remaining 15 drivers heading into Q2 — which lasts 15 minutes and with the first driver eliminated after six minutes.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Williams driver Valtteri Bottas topped preseason testing ahead of Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton on Wednesday, although he was using faster tires than the two-time defending world champion.
Bottas, who was .361 seconds quicker than Hamilton, was on the super-soft option, while Hamilton used softs in slightly cooler morning conditions — again underlining how much Mercedes has in reserve in terms of speed.
Danish driver Kevin Magnussen was third fastest for Renault, while four-time champion Sebastian Vettel was fourth and completed a massive 151 laps on a good day for Ferrari, the day after Kimi Raikkonen had gear box problems.
Williams is showing excellent consistency, with Bottas having been second-fastest on Tuesday behind the other Mercedes of Nico Rosberg .
Rosberg was only ninth fastest this time, but the German driver was running a race simulation of the Spanish Grand Prix— which will be held here on May 15 — and so was primarily using slower medium tires.
Although Williams can take heart from another consistent showing from Bottas, his mark of 1 minute, 23.261 seconds was two hundredths slower than Rosberg's best time on Tuesday — which was also on soft tires.
Quite how much more Mercedes has to unleash in terms of speed remains to be seen. The team may prefer not to show it until March 20, when the new season gets underway at the Australian GP in Melbourne.
The pressure is clearly on everyone else to catch up.
On a warm and sunny day, drivers made the most of ideal racing conditions to complete a bewildering amount of laps, with seven of the 12 who went out completing 100 laps or more.
That neither Mercedes driver joined the 100 club — Rosberg did 91 laps and Hamilton 73 — matters little, for they already proved the car's reliability last week when amassing 675 laps between them in the first preseason test.
"What the team has done this year already for the miles we've done is super-motivating," Hamilton said. "Every single person is going to hype us up. But you really don't know what fuel load Ferrari is on; they have a strong package. Even Williams looks like it has quite a strong package."
Still, Mercedes head Toto Wolff is optimistic the W07 car could be even better than last year.
"The cars are more reliable, everybody is doing more laps," he said. "I've the feeling it's the best season's start we've had in the last couple of years."
Toro Rosso also has cause for confidence, after Spaniard Carlos Sainz led the day in terms of longevity with 166 laps to underline how reliable the car is.
Even McLaren, so troubled by engine troubles last year as it reverted back to Honda, enjoyed a stress-free day as veteran British driver Jenson Button posted 121 laps along with the fifth fastest time.
"This is obviously what we work for at McLaren, to have the best chassis," McLaren racing director Eric Boullier said. "We're happy if we can achieve this; it means McLaren is back on track."
There was only one red flag as Marcus Ericsson went off into the gravel on turn 4 and lost a wheel on his Sauber — although the Swedish driver still managed 55 laps.
The only team to have a truly bad day was newcomer Haas, as Mexican driver Esteban Gutierrez went out for one installation lap and came straight back in, due to a problem with the turbocharger.
French driver Romain Grosjean was scheduled to drive on Thursday and Friday but Gutierrez may now be given some extra time behind the wheel after managing only 23 laps on Tuesday before heading back to the garage with a fuel problem.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Mercedes showed a glimpse of the speed that so terrifies its rivals as Nico Rosberg posted the fastest time Tuesday in preseason testing for the Formula One season, while world champion Lewis Hamilton used his time on the track for a race simulation.
The two teammates completed 675 laps in last week's first preseason test, confirming expectations that the Silver Arrows will be hugely reliable again when the new season starts on March 20.
Ferrari was quickest over all four days of testing last week, but they were illusory gains until Mercedes showed its speed this week.
With Mercedes using soft tires for the first time — having tested slower medium tires last time — Rosberg sped around in 1 minute, 23.022 seconds.
"Of course, it is a great feeling to know that our level is exceptionally high right now and the team is working sensationally," Rosberg said, before sounding the obligatory note of caution. "We have to keep our heads down and do our homework. We do not want any bad surprises."
Rosberg and Hamilton will keep alternating shifts until testing ends Friday.
"The good thing is that I will be in the car every day," Rosberg said. "So I have time to analyze, to look at the data and things that I can do better."
Finnish driver Valtteri Bottas was second fastest — .207 behind Rosberg — and Hamilton was sixth.
With the car's reliability not likely to be an issue leading up to the Australian GP in Melbourne, racking up laps is not Mercedes' top priority.
But Rosberg still managed 82 laps before lunch, while Hamilton — arriving at the track accompanied by his two dogs — did 90 after the resumption under blue skies and in mild conditions at the Catalunya track just outside of Barcelona.
Hamilton ran a simulation run of the Spanish GP — which will be held here on May 15 — using both sets of medium compounds and saving the quick softs for another day. Having won back-to-back drivers' and constructors' titles, Mercedes is under no pressure to prove its speed.
"Where we are now it looks like it's going to be quite tricky for anyone to challenge them at the beginning of the season," said Bottas, who logged 123 laps for Williams. "We are doing our best. We're really trying to chase them."
There was an encouraging performance for McLaren with Fernando Alonso third fastest and managing 93 laps.
Given McLaren's problems throughout last season with Honda engines, this will please McLaren's technical staff as much as two-time F1 champion Alonso — who recently gave an interview to Spanish radio insisting he can still win another F1 title.
The red flag came out early into the afternoon after Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari pulled up with a gearbox problem that kept his car in the garage for a couple of hours. However, he did manage the day's fourth quickest time ahead of Red Bull driver Daniil Kvyat, who had some rear brake issues.
"It is normal to have some little issues during testing, but I am not concerned as we have time to fix it," said Raikkonen, the 2007 F1 champion. "So far, the car feels good."
In the morning, Manor driver Rio Haryanto went back into the garage because of an oil leak, but the F1 newcomer from Indonesia completed 45 laps.
Haryanto was the slowest on the day, nearly five seconds behind Rosberg. Mexican Esteban Gutierrez, who did 23 laps before a fuel system issue sent him back to the Haas garage, was the second-slowest. Haas is the first American-led team in F1 since 1986.
"It's not ideal," Gutierrez said. "You can have these days when the whole program is interrupted. We are a new group."
Before the session, Toro Rosso unveiled its dark blue livery for the new season, with the young and highly-talented duo of Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz promising much after successful debut seasons. The Italian team has switched from Renault to 2015 Ferrari engines.
Last week, Verstappen and Sainz notched 447 laps — second only to Mercedes — and Verstappen showed his endurance in recording 144 laps for the day's highest total. The 18-year-old Dutch driver was the seventh quickest.
Force India's Nico Hulkenberg was eighth; Sauber's Felipe Nasr was ninth and Renault's Kevin Magnussen 10th, with all managing more than 100 laps
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