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Reviews & Comments |
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Overall
a great read, giving an insight into the world of motorsport over the decades, through the
eyes of one of the longest lived and best teams in auto racing. — RacingViews.com
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you will find in this extremely well written and illustrated book is a
fascinating and often inside look at the saga of racing, racing business,
team building and fascinating people. Buy it, read it, share it with your
non-racing friends!
---VICTORY LANE Magazine, Sept. 2007
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| Roger
Penske is the most successful team owner in the history of American
motorsport, with the team's 14 wins at Indianapolis constituting just the
tip of the iceberg. Any book aspiring to recount the team's full record,
therefore, would be a major undertaking. Alan Hummel, whose
Philadelphia-area roots mirror those of the team, has taken a shot at it
with this 272-page hardcover effort. The author describes
himself as a lifelong fan of the Penske group, his father having worked
for Sunoco, the team's first big sponsor. For readers of HMM, there are a
couple of benefits here: a full, season-by-season accounting of the team's
towering record in the SCCA Trans-Am Series, and its early days in NASCAR
representing both American Motors and Mercury. To that, we'd like to throw
in a kudos for the book's recognition of Penske in SCCA Formula A/Formula
5000, maybe the most underrated American race series ever, which placed
production small-block V-8s in open-wheel chassis. Some great photos of
Penske Lola-AMC from F5000, which used an injected version of the AMC
Trans-Am engine, are included. Hummel is candid about
making extensive use of previously published information, and the book
reads accordingly. It stands, though, as recognition of a generation-long
winning heritage that's likely unassailable. --- Hemmings Motor News, November 2007
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| Writing
a history of Penske Racing without the collaboration of its famous founder
would be a no-go for most historians, but not Alan Hummel. His father
worked for the Sun Oil Company and regularly took his son to race meetings
from 1969. Hummel witnessed Trans-Am, Can-Am and IndyCar, including
Penske's brilliant first driver Mark Donohue.
From Roger Penske’s own victory in a Porsche RS60 at Lime Rock in '59 to his team running the latest RS Spyder P2 in the American Le Mans Series, Hummel covers the North Carolina outfit's highs and lows over the past four decades. The 270-page book is packed with race analysis and Hummel’s style is enjoyable to read, but ultimately you crave the Penske team's view of its amazing success. --- Classic & Sports Car, March 2008
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| Once in
awhile a book so important to road racing fans arrives, we simply can't
ignore it. That is the case with the book from Motorbooks
International entitled Penske
Racing Team: 40 Years of Excellence, written by Alan Hummel. From its modest beginnings behind
a Philadelphia-area watchmakers shop some 40 years ago, the Penske Racing
Team, more than any other organization, has influenced the development,
growth and direction of auto racing in the United States as both a sport
and a business. Led by former race driver turned "Fortune
500" business mogul Roger Penske, this team has won more than 250
major auto races around the world, captured 19 national championships
(including 12 Indy-Car titles), and have enjoyed success in all forms of
racing--Indy-Cars, sports cars, Formula-1, endurance racing and NASCAR.
Penske Racing Team, 40 Years of Excellence documents the fascinating
history of this unique organization, focusing on the talented drivers and
innovative engineering that have been responsible for the teams
spectacular and enduring success. It also highlights the key events
that have defined American motorsports during this timeframe; including
the rise and fall of U.S. sports car racing in the 1960s and 1970s; the
politics of the USAC-CART split in the late 1970s; the CART-IRL battle
that unfolded 20 years later; and the phenomenal transformation of NASCAR
from its moonshine roots into the mainstream commercial phenomenon that it
is today. –Sportcraftcars.com
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was a good book about the history of Penske Racing written by a big Penske
fan. I was particularly interested in some of the material about their
participitation on some of the earlier series such as F5000, Can Am, USRRC
and USAC instead of the later stuff and the book was very complete on all
their endeavors. I got out my copy of the Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue
to read along with to complement the info. I would have liked to see more information about the Penske involvement in the IROC series which was one of my favorite race series having attended over 20 some IROC races at MIS and Daytona. I would have also liked to see more info about the race tracks like Michigan that were part of the Penske racing empire I did think the author was a little biased against one of my all time favorite drivers, Gary Bettenhausen, and you could tell that Tom Sneva was one of his very favorites, but all in all a pretty good racing book. --- Amazon.com Customer review
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| This
book covers all of the great Penske moments in his career of racing. There
are also coverage of Penske events not so well known. I would recommend
this book to anyone who has interest in the details of behind the scenes
racing in America.
--- Amazon.com Customer review |
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