<< Prev Page 3 of 3 Starting from 25th, Tracy was again the first Penske driver to hit problems when a turbocharger failure forced him to retire early. The remaining Mercedes engined Penskes dominated the event and led all but seven laps of the race. Fittipaldi had the upper hand and while trying to lap Unser, who was in second, he hit a rumble-strip and spun into the barrier. Fortunately Unser made no mistakes and his PC23 survived unscathed to score what Roger Penske later called his favourite victory in the Indy 500.
With the Ilmor/Mercedes 500I engine, illegal in the CART championship, Penske had to revert back to the more conventional twin-cam Ilmor V8. That certainly did not stop the team from dominating the series. In the remaining twelve races, the three drivers scored nine victories. Of the eleven victories scored that year five were complete sweeps of the podium. Unser concluded his fantastic year as champion, followed home by Fittipaldi and Tracy.
Not surprisingly, the regulations were changed at the end of the year and Team Penske could not use the special Indy engine again. It had nevertheless helped crown an utterly dominant year for the team. Perhaps even more importantly, it had helped attract Mercedes-Benz into the fray and from 1995 onwards the Ilmor engines were rebadged Mercedes-Benz. All pieces looked in place for a long period of domination but Team Penske gradually slipped and Unser's win at Indy proved to be the last for a Penske chassis. << Prev Page 3 of 3
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Starting from 25th, Tracy was again the first Penske driver to hit problems when a turbocharger failure forced him to retire early. The remaining Mercedes engined Penskes dominated the event and led all but seven laps of the race. Fittipaldi had the upper hand and while trying to lap Unser, who was in second, he hit a rumble-strip and spun into the barrier. Fortunately Unser made no mistakes and his PC23 survived unscathed to score what Roger Penske later called his favourite victory in the Indy 500.