When Chip Ganassi wheeled his Cosworth-powered Wildcat onto pit lane for Indianapolis 500 Pole Day on May 15, 1982, the 22-year-old driver was supposed to be attending another milestone event in his life.
Ganassi skipped his commencement ceremony at Duquesne University in his hometown of Pittsburgh for something that would start him on his career path as one of the most successful team owners in motorsports history.
Ganassi was driving for team owner Jack Rhoades.
With 53 entries vying for 33 spots, the college boy would have to perform under pressure to make the field.
Further down pit road was team owner Roger Penske and his three-driver team that included Rick Mears and a fast, young driver named Kevin Cogan.
In 1982, Penske had already won the Indianapolis 500 three times, including his first Indy win in 1972 with Mark Donohue as the driver, his second in 1979 with Mears and his third in 1981 with the legendary Bobby Unser.
Meanwhile, Bobby Rahal was preparing for his second Indianapolis 500 for a team fielded by Red Roof Inns owner and longtime racer Jim Trueman. He had finished 11th as a rookie driver at Indy in 1981 and qualified sixth for Trueman in 1982.
The only Andretti at Indy that year was Mario Andretti, a perennial favorite who would qualify fourth. Andretti was taken out before the start of the race when Cogan lost control of his car heading to the green flag, triggering a multi-car pileup that delayed the start of the race for nearly one hour.
Michael Andretti did not arrive at Indianapolis until 1983.
Forty years later, Penske, Ganassi, Andretti and Rahal are the most successful quartet of team owners at the Indianapolis 500.
Penske Racing, now known as Team Penske, arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first time in 1969 with Mark Donohue as the driver. Together, they revolutionized the Indianapolis 500.
“We were the college boys with the crew haircuts and the polished wheels,” Penske quipped.
Penske became the winningest team owner in Indianapolis 500 history with 18 wins and counting. It was said that Roger Penske owned Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
On Nov. 4, 2019, that became a reality when he purchased the world’s most famous race course, the Indianapolis 500 and the NTT IndyCar Series after 74 years of ownership by Indiana’s Hulman-George family.
Although Penske has climbed off the team’s timing stand, he has a powerful three-car team at this year’s 106th Indianapolis 500, including 2018 Indy 500 winner and 2014 IndyCar champion Will Power. Josef Newgarden is a two-time IndyCar Series champion but has never won the Indy 500. Australian Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin is back for his second attempt at an Indy 500 victory.
As for Ganassi, his driving career was cut short when he was involved in a massive crash with Al Unser Jr. at Michigan Int’l Speedway in 1984. Ganassi suffered injuries in that crash, and he would compete in just four more Indy car races after that.
Instead, Ganassi pursued other opportunities in the sport. He joined forces with famed team owner Pat Patrick in 1989 and went to victory lane at Indy after Emerson Fittipaldi won a thrilling duel with Al Unser Jr. in the 1989 Indianapolis 500.
In that 1989 race, Michael Andretti led 35 laps and appeared to be in control of the race before his Chevy engine blew up on lap 163 and finished 17th. Rahal drove for Team Kraco and finished 26th.
Team Penske also had trouble, with Mears’ 23rd-place finish the best of the team’s three drivers.
In 1990, Ganassi went out on his own, started Chip Ganassi Racing, signed Target as a sponsor and put Formula 1 driver Eddie Cheever in his Chevrolet-power Penske chassis. Cheever started 14th and finished eighth in a white Target entry, but it was the beginning of something big for Ganassi.
Arie Luyendyk, the 1990 Indianapolis 500 winner, joined Chip Ganassi Racing along with Robby Gordon in 1992.
It took a few seasons before Ganassi found the winning combination, but when he hired Michael Andretti to drive his car in 1994, he finally had a winner. Andretti drove to victory in Australia in his first race for Ganassi.
Since then, Ganassi has rivaled Penske as the leading team owner in IndyCar Series history with four Indianapolis 500 wins. Counting his four-straight championships in CART beginning with Jimmy Vasser in 1996, continuing with Alex Zanardi in ’97 and ’98, and Juan Pablo Montoya in ’99, Ganassi has won 14 Indy car championships — two shy of Penske’s all-time record of 16.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of Ganassi’s rookie year as a driver at the Indianapolis 500. He was the fastest rookie in the race that year, qualifying with a four-lap average of 197.704 mph.
“In some ways, it’s gone like that,” Ganassi told SPEED SPORT as he snapped his fingers. “Other ways, seems to have been a long time. It was certainly a different era in Indy car racing.
“People don’t remember Gordon Smiley was killed at Indy that year in qualifying. Jim Hickman was killed the next week at Milwaukee. There was a lot of death around there then. That has certainly changed. The safety aspects have changed,” Ganassi said. “I’d like to think there’s a lot of me that’s still the same. I still have as much passion about the sport as I did then. In fact, it’s shifted as my own personal goals have changed having a team as opposed to being a driver. I’m certainly happy with it.”
As for Michael Andretti, he is one of the greatest drivers in the history of the Indianapolis 500 who never won the race.
The second-generation star led nine of his 16 Indianapolis 500 starts for 431 laps. The laps led are also the most for a driver who never won the Indy 500.
“I should have won it so many times, but Indianapolis was a race track where everything seemed to go wrong for me,” Andretti said.
But as a team owner, Andretti has won five Indianapolis 500s, starting with Dan Wheldon in 2005. Dario Franchitti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi and Takuma Sato also won Indy for Andretti.
“Obviously, it wasn’t meant to be, to win it as a driver,” Andretti said after Sato’s 2017 win was his third win in four years. “We won it as an owner and three out of four years isn’t too bad.
“Maybe I’m just meant to win 15 of these things as an owner.”
Andretti Autosport is led by third-year driver Colton Herta, who is searching for his first Indy 500 victory, Rossi, former Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean and rookie Devlin DeFrancesco.
Longtime driver Marco Andretti will return to the team to drive the No. 98 entry in the Indianapolis 500.
Rahal won three CART championships and the 1986 Indianapolis 500 as a driver. Eleven days after Rahal’s 1986 Indianapolis 500 win, Trueman lost his battle to colon cancer and died on June 11, 1986.
In 1991, Rahal and Carl Hogan purchased the assets of Pat Patrick Racing with Rahal becoming an owner-driver. He won his third CART title in 1992.
Rahal continued as an owner-driver through the 1998 season. After Hogan left to form his own team in 1996, television icon David Letterman came on board, creating Rahal Letterman Racing.
Rahal’s operation left CART after the 2003 season to become a full-time IndyCar Series competitor in 2004. Rahal became an Indy 500 winning team owner that May when Buddy Rice drove to victory in a rain-shortened contest.
Chicago industrialist Michael Lanigan joined Rahal’s ownership group in 2011.
Sato drove the team’s Honda to victory after a dramatic battle with Scott Dixon in the pandemic-delayed 2020 Indianapolis 500.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing is back with a three-driver effort in this year’s Indy 500, featuring Graham Rahal, Jack Harvey and Christian Lundgaard.
Ganassi has entered five cars at Indianapolis for the first time in the team’s history. Dixon returns attempting to win his second Indy 500, his first since 2008. He will be joined by defending NTT IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou, challenger Marcus Ericsson and seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson. Tony Kanaan, the 2013 Indy 500 winner, is driving the fifth Indy entry.
While Penske, Ganassi, Andretti and Rahal are four pillars of recent Indianapolis 500 success, they have nothing on four-time winner A.J. Foyt when it comes to longevity.
Foyt, 87, has owned an Indianapolis 500 entry every year since 1966.
Foyt has won the Indianapolis 500 four times a driver, twice as an owner-driver (1967 and ’77) and once as solely at owner when Kenny Brack drove to victory in the 1999 Indianapolis.