Pride of the Penske gene pool: the last IndyCar for the constructor

It takes time for certain cars to assume their place in history. Cars that achieve firsts are easy to recognise and remember, for their importance is clear to see from the moment they achieve their fame. But what about those that provide the other bookend, marking the last time its manufacturer achieved a certain kind of success? Those are much more difficult to spot, yet, in terms of their significance, perhaps no less important.

Take this gorgeous Mercedes-Benz-powered Penske PC26 as an example. When it was new in 1997 it was a well-engineered but, by Penske’s stratospheric standards, only reasonably successful Indycar. It started the season strongly, with Paul Tracy coming second at Homestead before winning at Nazareth, Rio de Janeiro and St Louis. But thereafter it faded, leaving Tracy a mere fifth in the championship and his team-mate, Al Unser Jr, way down in 13th spot. Hard to spot the significance, isn’t it? In fact this is not only the car that notched up Penske’s 99th victory when Tracy won at Gateway, St Louis, but by the time victory number 100 was scored three seasons later, it was with a chassis built by Reynard. This, then, is the last Indycar manufactured by Penske to win a race. And by ‘this car’ I mean the very machine you see here, Penske PC26, chassis 005.

It shouldn’t seem strange to see it on an English airfield, for not only was it designed and built in Poole, its 2.65-litre V8 Mercedes engine is also English, being of Ilmor design and built in Brixworth – a matter of minutes down the road from where we are today. But it is strange: despite its origins you’d need something from NASCAR to find a car more quintessentially American than this. Today, it resides with Patrick Morgan, son of the late Paul Morgan, who with Mario Illien founded Ilmor back in 1984.

Morgan runs Dawn Treader Performance and if the name is not familiar it’s because the cars rebuilt, restored and prepared there are not designed to compete in the modern world of historic racing, but to be returned to as close to original condition as possible. They are pieces of history that, through the extraordinary skills and dedication of those who work at Dawn Treader, are allowed to exist in the present.

Looking at it today, none of this matters. Not only is it an extraordinarily beautiful car, prettier by far than Formula 1 machines of the era, but it is also built to a simply astonishing standard for a disposable race car with a life expectancy of substantially less than a year. Such is the finish of every component, from tiny joints to the carbon tub, that it becomes a thing of pure engineering beauty as well. Beresford parks the credit for this firmly at the door of Nick Goozee, then MD of Penske Cars, as well as Penske’s philosophy that everything had to be the best.

But it is one of the non-Penske parts – that Ilmor engine – that fascinates me most. Having never so much as sat in an Indycar before I find its specification as fascinating as the soon-to-be-realised prospect of actually driving the car to which it is attached.

But if this engine guarantees the PC26 will be different to any other race car in my experience, it is the gearbox that’s likely to render useless all other racing reference points. It’s a Penske design but with British Xtrac internals and, insofar as it’s a sequential six-speeder, all is perhaps as you might expect. It’s the ratios it contains that so utterly divorce it from anything else. This PC26 has superspeedway gearing and these are the maximum speeds given for each of its six ratios: first goes to a little under 110mph, second to around 138mph. Third goes to 193mph, fourth to 224mph, fifth to 226mph. Sixth will take the car past 230mph. Clearly the first three gears simply get you up to speed but fourth, fifth and sixth are all flat-out gears: one for when running into a headwind, one for a tailwind and the last for slip-streaming. On a short airfield I’m clearly not even going to get out of third gear, but what’s worrying me more is how the hell to even get it moving. It has a tiny 5in sintered clutch, and if I burn that there’s not another.

At least it’s easy to climb in and out of. Indycars always tended to be built for the fuller frame compared to F1 cars, which seem to exclude all bar the snake-hipped from driving. You just step on the floor, support yourself with your hands, thread your legs through a carbon-fibre hoop and gently lower yourself down. As your backside hits terra firma, so your feet find the pedals. There are three as and where you’d expect. Ahead lies an LCD readout, most of which I can’t see, and numerous switches for various pitlane and fuel strategies, most of which I won’t need.

In fact you just flick on the ignition switches and wait for the car’s external starter to fire you up. Patrick has put a large insulation blanket over the rear wing to stop it and the man wielding the starter from being singed. Even through an Arai, balaclava and ear plugs, the commotion when the engine fires makes you want to run and hide. Indeed if I weren’t already firmly strapped into position, the flight reflex might have got the better of me. Even when your brain has become sufficiently accustomed to extract some sounds from the noise, it’s hard to find any you might call pretty. Deeper, uglier and more raw than a modern F1 engine, it is pure aggression on wheels.

It felt like you were picking up each cog and physically marrying it to its neighbour.

After a few more runs, during which I acclimatised just a little to what this car could do, I stopped for a chat with Patrick. “Is everything OK?” he asked, clearly concerned. “Er fine,” I replied, “why do you ask?” “Only because from what I can hear you don’t seem to be using very many revs.”

True, I’d not been able to see the rev-counter but I still thought I’d been revving the valves off it. So by adjusting the padding, wriggling down further into the cockpit and bending my knees some more, I afforded myself a glimpse of at least part of the rev-counter and set off again. Once more I short-shifted into second but then I let it go, realising I’d hitherto been shifting at least 2000rpm too early. And only then did the Penske let rip. The forces at work were so mighty it seemed fanciful that a mere mortal could exercise control over them.

Deeper, uglier and more raw than a modern F1 engine, it is pure aggression on wheels.

I felt like a passenger, as if it were coincidence that the car reacted to my stammering inputs, or at least that in doing so it was merely humouring me. On the next run I finally summoned the courage to plant my foot in first, and despite the three-figure potential of the gear and those massive rear slicks, at 60mph they spun like a Corvette’s leaving the lights. The data explains just how fast it is: the Noble M600 has a better power-to-weight ratio than a Bugatti Veyron and accelerates from 60-160mph in 12.9sec. Yet despite the wheelspin, the ultra-long gears, more than 1.5 tonnes of downforce at 160mph and all the attendant drag, the Penske added the same 100mph in 7.5sec.

Never again will I look at one of these cars as some kind of poor relation to an F1 machine. Yes, it has steel brakes and wishbones and a manual transmission because that is what the rules mandated, but whether you look at it as a thing of beauty, an engineering masterclass or just an explosively powerful and ferocious racing car, this Penske PC26 is simply exceptional. The fact that it is also a car of such great significance means it’s an important part of motor racing history too.

Our thanks to Patrick Morgan and all at Dawn Treader for making this feature possible.