You have to take your hat off to Roger Penske. At a time when many American race teams are struggling to sell sponsorship, Penske has announced a string of new deals in the past week. Using the power of the Penske brand both within motor racing and beyond, as well as his superb ability as a salesman, Roger has completed a skein of new agreements for his NASCAR and IndyCar teams.

Last week Penske announced that Shell and Pennzoil would replace long-time backer Miller Beer as the sponsor of Kurt Busch’s NASCAR car (below). Both companies will also act as primary sponsor of Hélio Castroneves’s Indycar at next year’s Indianapolis 500 and on other selected events, as well as associate sponsors of Roger’s entire IndyCar team. On December 1 Roger announced that Meijer (a thriving Midwestern grocery and superstore chain) would be another associate sponsor of his three Indycars. And this week Penske announced IZOD (a clothing brand which is the IndyCar Series’ title sponsor) as an associate sponsor of his Indycars and the primary sponsor of Ryan Briscoe’s car.

From 1990-09 Penske’s IndyCar team was sponsored primarily by Marlboro, but in recent years restrictions on tobacco advertising progressively reduced the company’s involvement with the team. Although Penske Indycars continued to appear in Marlboro’s familiar red and white colours, the cars were not allowed to carry the cigarette manufacturer’s brand. Last year, after the arrangement finally came to an end, Roger’s cars were painted black and white with Team Penske logos, while Verizon came on board as the primary sponsor of Will Power’s car.

Now the team’s post-Marlboro age has arrived. In recent years Shell and Pennzoil have backed Richard Childress’s NASCAR car driven by Kevin Harvick (above), while IZOD became the IndyCar Series sponsor last year and also backed Ryan Hunter-Reay’s Andretti Autosports car for the most of the season. Grocery chain Meijer has been active for many years as an associate sponsor of a variety of Indycars, and with Verizon continuing as the primary backer of Power’s Indycar, Team Penske will enjoy a full slate of sponsorship in 2011. There’s also a chance that Sam Hornish will return to Indy racing to drive a fourth Penske entry in the Indy 500.

It was revealed last month that a new Ilmor/Chevrolet Indycar engine will appear in 2012 and of course Penske is the driving force behind the latest Ilmor/Chevy partnership. RP started his race team in 1966 and has established himself as one of American racing’s most successful and influential figures. Over the years his teams have won 332 major races – including 15 Indy 500s – and 23 national championships in numerous categories. Then there’s the Penske Corporation, described as a diversified transportation services company, which operates in more than 1800 locations worldwide with more than 36,000 employees and annual revenues exceeding US$16 billion.

Roger will celebrate his 74th birthday in February and his role in the sport remains as pervasive as ever. Other US team owners like Rick Hendrick and Chip Ganassi have achieved their share of success, but in the big picture Penske stands in a class of his own.

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NASCAR couldn’t have asked for a better championship battle, the closest in its history, with all three contenders in the running until the final laps. No matter what you may think about NASCAR, and as much as big-time American stock car racing is struggling with declining crowds and TV ratings, you can’t deny that it puts on a good show – probably the best in racing.

Jimmie Johnson, Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick all ran into trouble at some point in the season finale at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. All three looked likely champions at different stages of the race, but Johnson came through to take a record fifth consecutive Sprint Cup, narrowly defeating Hamlin and Harvick after a marathon season of 36 races over 10 months. Carl Edwards won at Homestead-Miami with Johnson finishing second, Harvick third and Hamlin 14th after a series of adventures.

Johnson is an excellent driver, a true racer and a good guy, and his fifth straight championship is a tremendous accomplishment. Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt are NASCAR’s greatest champions both with seven titles, but neither won five in a row. Statistically, in terms of starts versus championships, Johnson is well ahead of Petty and Earnhardt. At 35, he has raced Sprint Cup cars for 10 years, all with Rick Hendrick’s team, and he probably has at least another five or more strong seasons within his reach.

“I can’t believe it,” he grinned. “Four was amazing. Now I’ve got to figure out what to say about what it means to win five of these things. It’s pretty damn awesome, I can tell you that. Sometimes we weren’t the fastest this year, but we had the most heart and I think I enjoyed this season more than any of the others.”

Johnson’s fifth title is also the 10th – and a record – for Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet team. Hendrick started his team in 1984 and won his previous championships with Jeff Gordon (1995, ’97-98 and 2001) and Terry Labonte (in 1996).

Championship runner-up Hamlin drives for Joe Gibbs’s three-car Toyota team. The 30-year-old has been racing Cup cars for five years, all with Gibbs’s team. He won eight races this year, more than anyone else, and overshadowed his more hyped team-mate Kyle Busch. “We had a great year,” said Hamlin. “We won more races than we’ve ever won, and it was only circumstances that took us out.”

Hamlin believes Johnson and Hendrick’s team weren’t quite as powerful as in recent years: “I don’t think they showed the strength this year that they have in the past. That opened up the door to teams like us, and a few others, to win a lot of races. We really stepped up our programme the last couple of years. It’s a good feeling to go to the track knowing you can win on any given week.

“My job is to work in the off-season to do everything I can better. I know every year I’m going to be better than I was the previous year. So we’re going to take this team and keep working and go get ‘em next year.”

Harvick is equally confident of his chances of beating Johnson next year. “We went down swinging,” he said. “We came here to go as fast as we could and try to win. We did everything we wanted to do today except win the race, so this is a great spot to start building for a consistent championship next year.”

There’s now a brief breather, a few weeks off for the teams, and then it’s back to it to prepare for Daytona next February. The hope is the grandstands will be full and the TV ratings will at least level out.

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Denny Hamlin established himself as the top seed in NASCAR’s Chase for Cup by scoring his sixth win of the year in last Saturday night’s race at the 0.75-mile Richmond oval. Hamlin dominated the 400-mile race’s final stages in his Joe Gibbs Toyota, narrowly defeating team-mate Kyle Busch and defending NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. Joey Logano showed the strength of Gibbs’s Toyotas by taking fourth place in Virginia.

Richmond was the 26th and last race of NASCAR’s regular season before the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup, which kicks off this weekend on the one-mile New Hampshire Motor Speedway. Twelve drivers qualify each year for the championship play-off and they are seeded based on victories, so Hamlin goes to New Hampshire as the championship leader with 5060 points. Hamlin, 29, has been racing in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series since ’05 driving for famed NFL coach Joe Gibbs’s team. He finished third in the ’06 championship and came fifth last year. This season has been his most successful to date.

Defending champion Johnson is seeded second in the Chase for the Cup with 5050 points, courtesy of five wins. He has won the last four Sprint Cup championships with Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet team and is going after a record fifth straight title. Johnson was very competitive at Richmond, leading a good deal of the race, and is the favourite going into the championship play-off.

Kevin Harvick led the championship for most of the year and has won three races but could finish no better than ninth at Richmond. Harvick is seeded third in the Chase for the Cup with 5030 points. He drives for Richard Childress’s three-car Chevrolet team and has been racing in NASCAR’s premier series for 10 years. His best season came in 2006 and ‘08 when he finished fourth in the championship, and he won NASCAR’s second division Nationwide championship in 2001 and ‘06.

Seeded fourth, also with 5030 points, is Kyle Busch who’s won three races so far this year. Busch, 25, is known as ‘Rowdy’ and has been touted as a future champion since his arrival in the Cup series in 2004. But he’s yet to find the consistency to challenge for the championship. His best year thus far came in ’07 when he finished fifth in the points in his last season with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team before moving to Gibbs’s Toyota operation.

Kyle’s older brother Kurt has won two races this year driving one of Roger Penske’s trio of Dodges, so he’s seeded fifth. Kurt won the championship in 2004 with Jack Roush’s Ford team. Completing the list of this year’s 12 championship chasers are 2002 and ‘05 champion Tony Stewart (Stewart-Haas Chevrolet), Roush Ford driver Greg Biffle, four-time champion (1996, ‘97, ‘98 and ‘01) Jeff Gordon in one of Hendrick’s Chevrolets, Carl Edwards (Roush Ford), Jeff Burton (Childress Chevrolet), 2003 champion Matt Kenseth (Roush Ford) and Clint Bowyer (Childress Chevrolet).

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NASCAR’s season kicked off on Saturday with qualifying for this Sunday’s Daytona 500, followed by the Budweiser Shootout 75-lap non-points-scoring sprint race under the lights. Qualifying was swept by Hendrick Motorsports as veteran Mark Martin took pole and team-mate Dale Earnhardt Jr qualified on the outside front row. Thursday’s pair of 150-mile qualifying races will determine the rest of the field.

Rick Hendrick’s four-car Chevrolet operation is split into two separate shops, one for multiple champions Jimmie Johnson’s #48 car and Jeff Gordon’s #24, the other for Martin’s #5 and Earnhardt Jr’s #88. So last weekend’s qualifying performances were particularly sweet for the less well-lauded side of Hendrick’s team. And with restrictor plates cutting horsepower by almost half at Daytona, the drivers were quick to place all credit at the foot of Hendrick’s engine builders and bodymen.

“That was not an accomplishment of mine,” said Martin. “That was [crew chief] Alan [Gustafson] and all our guys, and to have Dale Jr on the front row just means we’re doing our stuff right.”

Added Dale Jr: “I got to thank the engine shop, mainly for the power, and all the guys in the bodyshop for making my car as slick as it is. Hendrick’s is a great organisation and the driver doesn’t have anything to do with it here at Daytona. It’s just all race car right there.”

Saturday night’s Bud Shootout was won by Kevin Harvick aboard one of Richard Childress Racing’s Chevrolets. Harvick beat Kasey Kahne’s Richard Petty Ford and Jamie McMurray’s Earnhardt-Ganassi Chevrolet after many of the favourites were taken out in accidents. Harvick believes he has a good combination for the 500 and is looking forward to Thursday’s qualifying races to get a better understanding of where everyone stacks up.

“Our handling package is fairly good,” he said. “Obviously, it’ll change as we go through the week because everything will shift to daytime temperatures. It was pretty cool tonight and there was probably a bit of added grip to what we’ll have during the 500 as rubber gets onto the race track. But our basic package is really good and tonight that’s what kept us up front.

“I wasn’t tending to one groove,” Harvick added. “I could run the top, bottom or middle and didn’t have to be picky about who I followed. I could go wherever I wanted, and that’s nice to have options like that. It lets you be pretty aggressive and this was an aggressive race. There was not a whole lot of thinking about what the consequences might be. It was all about whatever it took to go forward.”

Saturday afternoon’s 200-mile ARCA race was won by veteran Bobby Gerhart, who scored his sixth win at Daytona. Danica Patrick made her stock car debut in the race, qualifying 12th and finishing a respectable sixth after a collision with Nelson Piquet Jr. Piquet was also making his stock car debut and had to retire, but Patrick recovered and showed plenty of moxie by coming through the field to run with the leaders in the closing laps.

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Kyle Busch (above) has threatened to win every NASCAR Sprint Cup race run this year and at the high-banked Atlanta Motor Speedway last weekend the 22-year old finally put it all together to score a dominant victory. After three years with Rick Hendrick’s Chevrolet team, Busch was dropped by Hendrick last year in favour of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Busch was snapped up by Joe Gibbs’ team which also switched over the winter to Toyota and the combination has been the quickest in NASCAR so far this year.

Busch’s win at Atlanta was Toyota’s first in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup series while teammate Tony Stewart (above) made it a one-two sweep for Toyota. It took Toyota just thirteen months and forty races to get to the front in NASCAR and with Busch now leading the championship it’s clear to all that Toyota not only has arrived in NASCAR but that many more wins are bound to follow.

(Kyle Busch)

Meanwhile, the passel of open-wheel drivers who followed Juan Pablo Montoya’s tracks in switching to NASCAR this year are beginning to face the cold reality of their new lives in stock car racing. At this early stage of the season Montoya is doing no better than last year and is mired in twenty-fourth place in Sprint Cup points while each of Sam Hornish, Dario Franchitti and Patrick Carpentier are outside the top thirty-five in points. Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier have been fortunate through NASCAR’s first five races of the year in enjoying quaranteed starting positions. But if they’re unable to break into the top thirty-five at the Bristol, Tennessee bullring this coming weekend they will face the same challenge encountered last year by A.J. Allmendinger.

(Montoya leads the pack in the number 42 car)

Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier will have to make it into the field on pure qualifying speed which means they’ll have to be among the ten or fifteen fastest cars at each race to have any hope of making the field. Like Montoya and Allmendinger before them, each of Hornish, Franchitti and Carpentier are discovering that NASCAR is a much tougher game than they ever imagined.

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NASCAR is where the show and entertainment is king and the sanctioning body is in complete control of the entire production. As such, NASCAR could not have hoped for a better kick-off to its season at Daytona last weekend prior to Sunday’s 50th running of the Daytona 500. To the delirious delight of his legion of fans, scored a dominant victory in Saturday night’s Bud Shoot-out in his debut with Rick Hendrick’s team and during an early, Friday night practice session, notorious bad guys Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch got into each other on and off the track, providing the media and fans with a perfect piece of juicy controversy.
Driver introductions before the Shoot-out told the story. Busch was roundly booed by most of the crowd. Stewart enjoyed plenty of cheers as well as boos while defending-champion Jimmie Johnson and team-mate Jeff Gordon were greeted with muffled boos drowning out small ripples of applause. But when ‘Little E’ was introduced he brought-down the house as the place erupted in passionate cheering. Clearly, Earnhardt stands in a class of his own as NASCAR’s most popular driver and cultural icon.

And when ‘Little E’ went to the front in the race the place went wild, cheering with resounding enthusiasm whenever he fended off challenges from Stewart, Gordon or Dave Blaney, and going bananas on the final lap as he stayed out front entirely resistant to any moves or tricks tried by his competitors to beat Stewart, Johnson and Gordon across the line. Casey Mears also ran well, ultimately finishing sixth behind Reed Sorenson and Blaney, so it was essentially the four Hendrick Chevrolets versus a couple of Toyotas.

Of course, today’s modern, restrictor-plate constrained Daytona 500s rarely offer a window on the season to follow. What happens at Daytona and Talladega often prove to be unique, rarely if ever repeated elsewhere. Whether or not Earnhardt will be a serious championship contender this year remains to be seen, but at Daytona this week he is the unrivalled favourite.

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