While he of course wished that Scott had been able to pull through and win on Sunday, Penske was still able to take away positives from the addition of McLaughlin (from Garry Rogers Motorsport) and race engineer Ludo Lacroix (from Triple Eight Race Engineering) in the off-season.
“Scott did a terrific job and he’s been a real asset to the team and Ludo Lacroix of course has — he’s certainly paid for himself here the past couple weeks since he’s been with us,” Penske said. “We’re thrilled to have the performance right out and now we have to continue that kind of building and get better and have the consistency that we didn’t have in the past.”
That building of consistency was a point that Penske continually came to when assessing his team’s growth since he bought into the team in 2015.
The Shell V-Power Racing Team finished 15th in the team standings that season, then expanded to two cars and brought over Fabian Coulthard from Brad Jones Racing prior to last season. They finished fifth in the team standings after those changes, and Penske is focused on seeing the team move further up the grid in 2017, with an eye on a run for the both the teams’ and drivers’ championships.
He recognized that it had been a long and painstaking process to get to Sunday’s results in Clipsal.
“I think you have to look at where we are now. We started with a team with Dick Johnson and we couldn’t bring cars over here to work on, we had no tires, we really had our hands tied behind our back,” he said. “We ran one car, and of course with Marcos making the decision that he wasn’t going to continue, that really put us in a hole. He was very good about it — I don’t mean to say that negatively. Then last year, we added Fabian and we got a little bit of success and I think we started to build the team with more people and more experienced people … because [to start], we had nobody!”
In reflection, Penske attributed his team’s growth to bringing in the right people and letting them put in the hard work — principles that carry more than a few echoes to the famed “effort equals results” moniker upon which he has built his entire empire.
“I think that hard work and what they’ve done down there certainly has paid off because we’ve got very good experienced people now,” he said. “You know, they’re committed and I think the fact that we’ve had some success will give us more momentum.”
Audio with Roger Penske:
About the Writer
James Pike is a multi-faceted reporter for Race Chaser Online and an analyst on the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network.
Pike is the lead correspondent for Race Chaser Online’s coverage of Australian Supercars and also covers regional touring series events in the Carolinas. He is a graduate of the Motorsports Management program at Belmont Abbey College and currently resides in Winston-Salem, N.C.
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