‘This is who we are’: Roger Penske basks in history of Penske gallery at IMS Museum

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INDIANAPOLIS — For Roger Penske, mocked up design plans on paper just aren’t enough, and so when the racing magnate strolled through the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum’s new Penske gallery — as part of a $60.5 million, 17-month renovation project — the billionaire chairman of Penske Corp. was surprised very little.

Why?

“Well, I saw it complete back in Detroit, because we mocked all of this up in a warehouse to try and get everything right. You see it on a piece of paper, and it’s normally not what you would expect,” Penske said Wednesday morning minutes after helping cut the ribbon for the Museum’s grand reopening. “The opportunity for us to have the Penske gallery, this is one of those things where when you have the artifacts that we have and the chance to show them in this particular environment, it’s amazing.

“We’re very excited to show our (race-winning cars) here, and you see them from many decades. To think we’re going to run the 109th running (of the Indy 500) in a couple months, this is going to be a showplace for everyone coming to see us this year.”

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The Penske gallery is but one of more than a half-dozen history-rich, immersive, educational exhibits that debuted this week at the Museum, a wholesale renovation that saw Museum president Joe Hale, along with his staff and other consultants, follow Penske’s wishes — as the Museum’s de facto landlord — to double its public usable space, while being barred from building up or out, so as not to affect any sightlines for race fans in the bleachers. But whereas those other exhibits reflect pillars of the Museum’s revamped brand and mission — as a venue to educate and entertain IMS race fans young and old through the display of its burgeoning car collection, vast troves of artifacts and modern educational tools — the Penske gallery is a tribute to the steward of IMS and IndyCar who fell in love with racing through a visit to the 1951 Indy 500 with his father.

Just 18 years later, Penske would enter a car into the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. He’d win on his fourth try with driver Mark Donohue, and he’d go on to win 20 times — one more than the other 11 current active teams combined.

And so the gallery is but a small collection of artifacts from decades of Team Penske domination, all pieces with unique ties to the team owner’s decorated ties to the “Racing Capital of the World” — starting with a mini hallway flanked on both sides by blown-up photos and names of all 20 of his 500-winning drivers, each commemorated with race-day programs from that year and print copies of the IndyStar recapping Team Penske’s various victories. The gallery’s rear wall features all 20 of Penske’s Baby Borg trophies sitting on a shelf highlighted to spotlights from above, each sitting with the corresponding driver’s race-winning helmet — several still milk-stained from raucous celebrations gone by.

On the opposite wall stand fire suits fitted over mannequins — one each for his 14 individual 500-winning drivers. Elsewhere along the walls are trinkets from the last 60-plus years of Penske on and off the track, ranging from four American open-wheel championship trophies from different eras of the sport to more than 70 Indy 500 and championship-winning rings from Penske’s collection, the team’s original garage sign and a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to Penske in October 2019 by President Donald Trump. The shop floor features Team Penske’s 500-winning cars from 1988, 1994, 2009 and 2024, along with his team’s first 500 entry from 1969 and the race-winning car from the first 500 he attended in 1951.

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It all represents just part of Team Penske’s vast racing collection, much of which is housed in the team’s own museum in Scottsdale, Ariz., and from which cars and other artifacts were temporarily removed in order to augment the IMS Museum’s collection.

“When you think about it, I’ve invested personally a lot of time and effort since we first came here in 1969 as a car owner, and then a promoter of the sport and now (as the track owner). At that point, we were fully committed as a family, as a company and with our partners to make this the greatest track in the world,” Penske said. “To have a museum here with our artifacts — the rings, the engines, the uniforms and all the interactive pieces — it’s special, and we tried to make it special because this is who we are.”

As anyone who knows Penske would expect, he says plans already exist for if Newgarden, 2018 Indy 500 winner Will Power or 2024 Indy 500 polesitter Scott McLaughlin manage to make it three straight for the team in May.

“Absolutely. We can always turn the corner (on the winners’ hallway) and put in another,” Penske said. “We’re thinking ahead. You’ve got to think a lap ahead in this business anyhow.”

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During his speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, Penske noted the museum, which he said he signed to a 25-year lease upon taking ownership of IMS for a whopping $1, expects to host roughly 250,000 visitors over the next 12 months. Should it keep on that track for its next 50 years — the museum moved into its current location inside the gates of IMS nearly 50 years ago — he pointed out it could see more than 10 million race fans.

Along with excesses from the capital campaign — museum officials said in 2023 upon announcing the wide-ranging renovation project they aimed to raise $89 million and were $3.5 million under the $64 million budgeted for Phase 1 — the board is also in pursuit of a nine-figure endowment by selling off the last of its non-IMS-affiliated cars in its collection, which would allow it to add to its roughly three-dozen 500-winners the museum owns that join the hordes of other 500-participating entries.

From 2021: IMS Museum celebrates acquiring Bobby Rahal’s 1986 Indy 500-winning car for collection

Penske hailed Hale as a “helluva salesman” for the money the museum president had been able to acquire in such a short period of time that has helped turn a sometimes overlooked part of the IMS experience into a world-class facility stocked with hours and hours of riveting history to dive into.

“The real credit for all this should go to the IMS Museum and its board of directors and the staff, because it took hard work to transform it into this,” Penske said. “We’re just part of what’s happening here, and we’re excited.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Penske Gallery at IMS Museum full of history, rings, cars, fire suits