Roger Penske: “I am Interested to See That Announcement as We All Were Here This Week”
May 11, 2007
MODERATOR: It’s always great to have Team Penske with us, including two giants of the Speedway. Obviously, Roger, with 14 victories here and Rick Mears, a four-time winner at Indianapolis. We know Roger is on a particularly tight schedule. The drivers will join us after the drivers’ meeting has concluded, but our plan is to jump right into questions for these two, with an acknowledgment that Roger at the very least may have to leave because he has an 11 o’clock appointment, I believe.
Q: You’ve been running fast all week. Talk about how excited you are to see your son get involved with this?
ROGER PENSKE: Well, this kind of came out of Jay’s interest, you know, in the sport. He came here as a young boy, obviously hanging around as we were at the track, and you know, through his business, had a relationship with Steve Russo, who was the founder, not Counter Peripherals but Seagate, and they decided they would like to run a car and they had a sponsor.
So, you know, we went through the proper channels and were able to supply them a car. You know, Ryan Briscoe obviously is a driver that is associated with our ALMS team and the package went together and some of those people, Nigel Bennett works on the Porsche team and some of the other folks who are on the weekly circuit there are here at the Speedway. But that’s what we’re focusing on our two cars, and the yellow car kind of looks like Mears there (inaudible) when he’s coming down the track. But that’s worked out well so far, and Briscoe has done a good job and Nigel. And of course Jay Signore, who ran in IROC and has been with me, I don’t know how many, 25 or 30 years is heading up that operation. So you know, they have got a lot of experience in that garage, and I think we want to see them do well.
