DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Porsche Penske Motorsports program was one of the few bright spots in 2025 for Team Penske, which had a rough IndyCar season and saw its three-year run as NASCAR champions snapped.
The IndyCar team managed only two wins, never challenged for the championship, was engulfed in an Indianapolis 500 inspection infraction that cost three Penske executives their jobs and has forced Roger Penske to re-examine the technical structure of IndyCar officiating.
NASCAR saw a three-year reign as Cup Series champions snapped when Joey Logano and Ryan Blaney — the 2022, 2023 and 2024 title holders — both failed to advance to the finale. The Penske trio of drivers managed six wins on the season but Blaney’s sixth-place finish showing in the final Cup standings was the best the proud organization could muster.
Now is a new year, the 60th anniversary of Penske fielding a racing organization, and it was the sports car program that set the tone for what the 88-year-old owner expects in terms of results. His No. 7 Porsche entry won the Rolex 24 at Daytona on Sunday to take its third consecutive win in the most prestigious endurance sports car race in the United States.
“Winning the 24 Hours of Daytona three consecutive times with this Porsche Penske Motorsport team is an incredible accomplishment. That sustained success is only achieved with great team work, focused and determined drivers, a resilient crew and a commitment to winning,” Penske said at Daytona International Speedway.
“Our success at this event helped put our team on the map over six decades ago and winning here in Daytona is a perfect way to celebrate the start of Team Penske’s 60th anniversary season.”
There’s no doubt Penske has something special in his sports car program, which has managed to win the Rolex as well as the overall IMSA championship in 2024 and 2025. The success has come with multiple different lineups, and Brazilian driver Felipe Nasr the lone holdover in the threepeat of Rolex wins. Nasr made it so that a Brazilian driver has been part of the winning team the last six seasons — countryman Helio Castroneves was part of the winning teams in the previous three.
Penske is only the third team in 64 years to win the Rolex in three consecutive years, joining Chip Ganassi Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing.
Penske made a joke in victory lane about Nasr showing up to their initial meeting in a clandestine parking lot wearing a full navy suit — an appreciation Penske felt made Nasr “Penske Material.”
Nasr at the time was in the middle of racing for a championship with Action Express Racing — a team owned by NASCAR chairman Jim France — and it wasn’t the best time to discuss a possible defection. But Penske had a Porsche program to build and Nasr, who had misjudged the length of the walk to the meeting, stood before him sweating in his suit as the perfect candidate.
“It was kind of a secret meeting and I showed up to this place, but I was a little worried, and I thought I could walk the distance, but I never checked the weather outside,” Nasr said. “I was inside some kind of restaurant and I was just taking a drink and just waiting on time. I said, ‘OK, I’d better start walking.’
“But it was very warm that day, and those five minutes I walked, that was not a good move because I started to just sweat. I’m like, I’m going to look nervous now. What are those guys going to say? I said, ‘Well, it’s too late now.’ Then comes up this car, rolls down the window, it was Roger saying ‘Hey, you’re the driver, come on board, let’s talk.’ From that moment on, I knew something special was about to unfold.”
There’s no guarantee the Rolex win is going to fix the entire Team Penske program, which has a new sports car lineup, as well as a new IndyCar lineup with youngster David Malukas taking over this year for Penske mainstay Will Power.
Power, who turns 45 the day of the IndyCar season-opener, is now with Andretti Global and was not renewed in large part because of age. Malukas is only 24.
The NASCAR program returns intact but a new championship-deciding format could possibly work against the Penske program. All three of Logano’s titles and Blaney’s lone Cup came in the now-defunct winner-take-all format, and both drivers previously capitalized on the win-and-advance model that also has been eliminated.
It’s impossible to predict what kind of year Penske will have in 2026, and most organizational insiders point to the May disruptions around the Indy 500 as a months-long setback that took time and restructuring to recover from.
But the Rolex victory this weekend shows that Penske has not relented in his pursuit of winning and should stop at nothing to get all his programs back on top this year.
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