DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Porsche Penske Motorsports program has been one of the few bright spots in 2025 for Team Penske, which had a tough IndyCar season and saw its three years of NASCAR championship shattered.
The IndyCar team had just two wins, was never challenged for the championship and was engulfed in an inspection violation at the Indianapolis 500 that cost three Penske executives their work and forced Roger Penske to re-examine the technical structure of IndyCar refereeing.
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NASCAR enjoyed a three-year reign as the Cup Series champions were shattered when Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney – the 2022, 2023 and 2024 title holders – failed to make the final round. The trio of Penske drivers earned six wins this season, but Blaney’s sixth-place finish in the final Cup standings was the best the proud organization could muster.
It’s now a new year, the 60th anniversary of Penske’s founding of a racing organization, and it’s the sports car program that has set the tone for what the 88-year-old owner expects in terms of results. His No. 7 Porsche won the Rolex 24 at Daytona on Sunday to claim its third consecutive victory in the most prestigious endurance sports car race in the United States.
“Winning the 24 Hours of Daytona three consecutive times with this Porsche Penske Motorsport team is an incredible accomplishment. This sustained success can only be achieved with excellent teamwork, focused and determined drivers, a resilient crew and a commitment to winning,” Penske said at Daytona International Speedway.
“Our success at this event helped put our team on the map more than six decades ago and winning here at Daytona is a perfect way to celebrate the start of Team Penske’s 60th anniversary season.”
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There is no doubt that Penske has something special in its sports car program, which has managed to win the Rolex as well as the overall IMSA championship in 2024 and 2025. Success has come with several different crews, and Brazilian driver Felipe Nasr is the sole survivor of Rolex’s three victories. Nasr has had a Brazilian driver on the winning team for the past six seasons – his compatriot Helio Castroneves was on the winning teams in the previous three.
Penske is just the third team in 64 years to win the Rolex three years in a row, joining Chip Ganassi Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing.
Penske made a joke on victory lane about Nasr showing up to their first meeting in a parking lot wearing a navy blue suit — a remark Penske said made Nasr “Penske material.”
Nasr was in the midst of a championship run with Action Express Racing – a team owned by NASCAR president Jim France – at the time, and it wasn’t the best time to discuss a possible defection. But Penske had a Porsche program to build and Nasr, who had misjudged the length of the drive to the meeting, stood before him sweating in his suit as the ideal candidate.
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“It was kind of a secret meeting and I showed up at that location, but I was a little worried and thought I could walk the distance, but I never checked the weather outside,” Nasr said. “I was at some kind of restaurant and I was just having a drink and I was just waiting on time. I said, ‘OK, I better start walking.’
“But it was really hot that day, and those five minutes that I was walking, it wasn’t a good thing because I started sweating. I’m like, I’m going to look nervous now. What are these guys going to say? I said, ‘Well, it’s too late now.’ Then this car comes, roll down the window, it was Roger saying ‘Hey, you’re the driver, get in, let’s talk.'” From that “That’s when I knew something special was going to happen.”
There is no guarantee that Rolex’s victory will fix the entire Team Penske program, which includes a new line of sports cars, as well as a new IndyCar line with young David Malukas taking over this year for Penske stalwart Will Power.
Power, who will turn 45 on the opening day of the IndyCar season, is now with Andretti Global and was not renewed largely due to its age. Malukas is only 24 years old.
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The NASCAR program returns intact but a new decisive format for the championship could possibly run counter to the Penske program. Logano’s three titles and Blaney’s lone Cup came in the now-defunct winner-take-all format, and both drivers previously capitalized on the win-and-lead model that has also been eliminated.
It’s impossible to predict what kind of year Penske will have in 2026, and most organization insiders point to the May disruptions around the Indy 500 as a months-long setback from which it took time and restructuring to recover.
But Rolex’s win this weekend shows that Penske hasn’t given up in its pursuit of victory and should stop at nothing to get all of its programs back on top this year.
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AP Auto Racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
