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| Birth Name(s) : Roger Penske |
Date of Birth: N/A |
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Single
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Full Roger Penske Biography
Roger Penske (born February 20, 1937 in Shaker Heights, Ohio) is the owner of a very successful automobile racing team Penske Racing, the Penske Corporation, and other automotive related businesses.
He also is one of the corporate directors at General Electric and was chairman of Super Bowl XL in Detroit, Michigan. He was previously on the board of Home Depot and Delphi Automotive before resigning to chair the Detroit Super Bowl Committee. He is a 1959 graduate of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania where he was also a member of Phi Gamma Delta.
Roger Penske has five children with wife Kathy: Roger Penske Jr, Gregory Penske, Blair Penske, Mark Penske, and Jay Penske.
Starting in 1958, Penske purchased, raced and sold race cars, and was very successful both financially and on the track.
By 1960, he was a well known race car driver (Sports Illustrated SCCA Driver of the Year), winning prestigious races until 1965, when he retired as a driver, to concentrate on his first Cadillac dealership in Philadelphia, PA. He subsequently began his now famous Penske Racing in 1965 as well. Interestingly enough, although Penske competed in two Formula One Grand Prix, and won a NASCAR Pacific Coast Late Model race at Riverside in 1963, he never ran the Indy 500. In fact, he was offered a rookie test at Indianapolis but turned it down for business reasons. Rookie Mario Andretti stepped in for Penske to take that test at Indianapolis.
His team first competed in the Indianapolis 500 in 1969, winning that event 14 times between 1972 with driver Mark Donohue and 2006, and their first NASCAR win was in 1973. His teams have won many races in the subsequent years. He closed his European-based Formula One business in 1977. In 1982, he became the Chairman of the Penske Truck Leasing business.
Penske Racing now operates a NASCAR team comprising Kurt Busch, Ryan Newman, and his development driver Billy Wease. They also operate an Indy Racing League team composed of Helio Castroneves and Sam Hornish, Jr. Previously, they ran cars in the CART series that included some of the best drivers of the time, including Gary Bettenhausen, Tom Sneva, Mario Andretti, Bobby Unser, Al Unser, Al Unser, Jr., Emerson Fittipaldi, Rick Mears, Danny Sullivan, Paul Tracy and Gil de Ferran.
Penske recently purchased the old Matsushita air conditioning plant in Mooresville, NC and reconditioned it to consolidate his racing empire. Now, all of Penske's racing operations are under one massive roof with his IRL, NASCAR, and ALMS teams sharing over 424,000 square feet of space encompassing 105 acres. The shop includes all the necessary pieces to compete on the highest level in all of his racing endeavors, including a state of the art, in-house, wind tunnel. To complete the facilities, Penske imported over one million tons (250,000 pieces) of Italian marble.
All of these companies are owned by Roger Penske (Penske Truck Rental is a joint venture with General Electric, a company on whose board Roger Penske sits).
Roger Penske's United Auto Group will be marketing the Daimler-Chrysler Smart Car in the United States.
On July 2, 2007, United Auto Group will change names to Penske Auto Group and the stock symbol will change from United Auto's UAG to PAG on the New York Stock Exchange. |
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