In RACER's Great Teams III Issue: Secret Weapon

The legendary “unfair advantage”? Nope. Team Penske’s 1994 Indy 500 win came from reading the rule book and executing brilliantly.

Will this be the last, great secret we ever see in Gasoline Alley? It was Roger Penske’s Trojan Horse and it rode roughshod over the competition in the 1994 Indianapolis 500. Combining the wiles of Ilmor’s Mario Illien and Paul Morgan with the deep pockets of Mercedes-Benz, a V8 pushrod engine was unleashed on an unsuspecting paddock.

Utilizing a rule written with USAC’s loyalists and little guys in mind, The Captain and his crew, instead, exploited it to the nth degree. With more cubic inches and boost pressure allowed than the traditional overhead cam engine, the specially built stock-block Mercedes generated 150 more horsepower.

“It was really something special to be part of and the fact we were able to keep it a secret still amazes me,” says Al Unser Jr., who won that ’94 Indy 500 from the pole position in his Penske-Mercedes PC-23.

“I knew when they wanted me to start testing in January at Nazareth that something was going on,” recalls Paul Tracy, who did most of the test driving prior to May. “And the car was being housed in a special shop with a different crew, and Roger told us not to tell anyone.”

Emerson Fittipaldi, who had tangled with Unser in their memorable duel to the finish in 1993 when he scored his initial Indy win for R.P., was now teammates with the second-generation star.

“The first time I tested the Mercedes, I knew it was going to be fantastic,” says the two-time Formula 1 champion. “Al Jr. and I couldn’t stop smiling.”

Reliability issues (bent pushrods and faulty valve trains) during testing were cause for concern because this one-off motor had to last 500 miles.

“We were doing all our testing at Nazareth and I told Roger it was too small and that we needed to go to Indianapolis,” says Unser. “He said, ‘Oh no, we can’t do that, because it’s a secret,’ so then I suggested Michigan because we’d use a lot more throttle there.

“Even though he owned MIS at the time Roger was still nervous about all the track workers seeing us, but he finally agreed.”

Tracy did 90 percent of the testing and MIS really opened his eyes.

“You could feel the power at Nazareth,” he says, “but at Michigan I was averaging 230mph all day, close to being flat out, and you knew this was something special.”

Of course, in those days the internet hadn’t taken over the world and Speed Sport News was about the only source of rumor and gossip each week. Team Penske’s secret was safe – even when two former employees tried to get Little Al to confess...

“My dad and Uncle Bobby came into my motorhome at Phoenix that April and drilled me about whether we had a new engine for Indy, and I told them I couldn’t say yes or no,” says Unser, laughing at the memory. “I told them they’d both worked for Roger, so they knew I couldn’t tell them.

“Well, they got up, stormed out and slammed the door. I pissed them off.”

When IMS opened for practice, Fittipaldi and Tracy made a few laps while Unser was completing a 500-mile test at MIS.

“That was the day we knew it was reliable and I couldn’t wait to get to Indianapolis,” recalls Unser. But Indy practice was far from routine for Team Penske’s talented trio...

Get the complete version of this story in the Great Teams III Issue of RACER, on sale now. Take a video tour of the issue...