DPTJ Script: The death of Mark Donohue and the fall of Penske Racing in Formula 1

Featuring an interview with 1976 Austrian Grand Prix winner John Watson.

August 17, 1975. In warm-up for the Austrian Grand Prix, American icon Mark Donohue loses control of his March 751 after a tire fails. He careens through a metal Armco barrier and trackside signage and is knocked briefly unconscious in the wreckage. Against all odds, Donohue seems fine and heads back to the garage — where he begins to complain of a worsening headache. He's rushed to a local hospital, doctors urgent to operate on what has been diagnosed as a brain hemorrhage.

It's not enough. Two days later, on August 19, Mark Donohue dies from injuries he sustained driving a Formula 1 car run by his longtime friend and racing team partner Roger Penske.

August 15, 1976. Penske Racing has hired John Watson to pilot the PC4, the latest machine in the team's lineup. It's a stronger car — faster, more reliable, and on that Sunday afternoon, it's the car that first sees the checkered flag. Exactly one year after Mark Donohue's death, John Watson wins Penske's first Grand Prix. Several months later, the team folds, and Roger Penske returns to America.

For many motorsport fans here in the United States. Penske Racing's foray into Formula 1 remains one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ of all time, for so many reasons. What if Mark Donohue hadn't come out of retirement to race and develop the F1 car? What if Donohue had won Penske's first race? What if John Watson had been able to win more, to entice more sponsors, to give the team a reason to continue? What would Formula 1 look like today with a stronger American presence back in the late 1970s?

We won't ever know. But this week on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're going to dig into what we do know about Penske Racing in Formula 1, Mark Donohue's death, and John Watson's triumph — which remains the most recent Grand Prix win by an American team.

Roger Penske and Mark Donohue: Racing's greatest duo

On February 20, 1937, Roger Searle Penske was born into an Ohio family that had found success thanks to father Jay's metal fabrication company. His father instilled loyalty in his employees and encouraged his son to find meaning in hard work — something that Roger Penke has carried to this day. He set goals for himself far beyond anything he needed to achieve — and when he inevitably met those goals, he wiped the slate clean and set another one.

His entrepreneurial, do-anything spirit was in evidence right from the start. As a teenager, he would buy older cars, repair them, and sell them at a profit. After graduating from Shaker Heights High School in 1955, he headed off to Lehigh University — and it was during this period of time that he truly began to experiment with racing.

As a member of the Philadelphia Region’s Sports Car Club of America arm, Penske honed his craft at Vineland Raceway in New Jersey and at various small hillclimbs in the region, but he had professional aspirations that saw him named Sports Illustrated's SCCA Driver of the Year in 1961. He contested two Formula 1 Grands Prix and was offered a rookie test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ahead of the 500 — but his aspirations went far beyond actually competing himself.

It didn't take long before Penske purchased his first car dealership, where he sold Chevrolets in Philadelphia. Actively racing himself was a risk, and it was massively time consuming. But he couldn't quite shake the racing bug, and in the late 1960s, he founded a little organization called Penske Racing. It was a small but dedicated team that consisted of a few trusted engineers and mechanics helmed by Roger Penske's business sense, and it didn't take long before the outfit began to make waves in the American racing world.

Part of that had to do with Penske's longtime driver and right-hand man, Mark Donohue.

A mere 26 days after Roger Penske joined the world, Haddon Township, New Jersey gained its newest resident: Mark Neary Donohue Jr. Young Donohue was infatuated with automobiles, transforming his family garage into an auto shop and learning to drive when he was just 10 years old — though his forays on four wheels were regularly brought to a halt due to illness. From scarlet fever to polio, requiring a tonsillectomy, an appendectomy, and vein cauterizations throughout childhood, Donohue was plagued with pain, but you wouldn't know it unless you'd known him then; he kept his cards notoriously close to his chest, doling out personal information with extreme care. If you've ever read his autobiography The Unfair Advantage, you'll know what I mean: Donohue defined his life by his work on race cars; anything that went on behind the scenes remained there, far away from prying public eyes.

Much like Penske, Donohue was driven by a desire to achieve greater and greater heights. His love of cars and racing was a central part of his years studying for a degree in mechanical engineering at Brown University, and by 1959, he was a regular on the SCCA scene, winning his first national championship behind the wheel of an Elva Courier in 1961.

Whereas Roger Penske went off into the business realm, Donohue continued behind the wheel, and a fellow driver named Walt Hangsen took Donohue under his wing. Hangsen recognized the young driver's talent, even if Donohue himself admitted in his autobiography The Unfair Advantage that he largely had no idea what he was doing; he just did what came naturally. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.

But Hangsen could see the diamond in the rough. He organized for Donohue to race an MGB at the 1965 Bridgehampton 500-mile endurance event, and the driver from New Jersey won.

That was all Hangsen needed to see. He invited Donohue to join him behind the wheel of a Ferrari 275 at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1965 — a massive leap in both power and prestige for a young Donohue, but a challenge he vowed to meet head-on. The two men finished the event in 11th place overall — and when Hangsen was tragically killed testing a Ford GT40 in 1966, he'd spoken so highly of Donohue that there was no one else Ford could think to call when it came time to head over to the 24 Hours of Le Mans that summer.

Hangsen's death was an unspeakable tragedy, one that shook Donohue to his core — but one that also offered the young driver a wealth of opportunity. Beyond that drive with Ford, it was at Hangsen's funeral that Donohue was approached by Roger Penske. The US racing scene was small, particularly for drivers located on the East Coast, and the two had met before. But it was at that funeral that Penske came with an offer: He wanted Donohue to drive for him.

As Donohue tells it in his autobiography The Unfair Advantage, his early racing career was composed of a whole lot of pretending to know what he was doing but being offered some exceptional opportunities nevertheless. Penske wanted him. After Le Mans, Ford would ask to retain his services for another year, something Donohue would agree to — but he couldn't help but see what Penske had to offer.

And in his debut with Penske, Donohue suffered an embarrassing crash at St. Jovite that could very well have ended the duo's working relationship well before it began.

Again, I think it's worth stressing here that, despite having experience with the Ford GT program, Donohue was still fairly unknown. He mentions at multiple points in the early part of his autobiography that he seemingly ended up in these prestigious programs by chance, because he'd met someone who obviously liked him. But he was also keenly aware of the fact that the higher-ups in a lot of these programs were hoping for a more experienced, high-profile driver. For all of his skill, Donohue was still in the early stages of his racing career — and he was still in the midst of a very steep learning curve as he tried to understand exactly how to transform a decent car into a dominant one.

So when he dragged his wrecked Lola T70 back to the Penske pits at St. Jovite, Donohue admitted that he fully expected a disappointed Roger Penske to fire him on the spot.

“I figured I was going to have to write the whole project off to bad experience,” Donohue wrote. “‘It was nice while it lasted, Mark, but I'm sorry…’

“Instead, [Penske] told me to stick around. We would get everything fixed, and we would win the next one at Mosport, near Toronto. That was a very valuable vote of confidence for me at that point.”

When Donohue crashed again at Watkins Glen, Penske asked if he wanted to keep driving. And when Donohue gave an enthusiastic 'yes,’ Penske went off in search of another car.

It was a messy start to what would be an ultimately fruitful partnership, and at the close of 1966, Donohue brought his Penske Racing machine home to finish second in the Can-Am championship. Next came back-to-back US Road Racing Championships, absolute dominance in the Trans-Am series, rookie of the year honors at the Indianapolis 500 followed in 1972 by a victory, and a Can-Am championship.

Every good race team is built with two foundational elements: Engineering prowess and good business sense. Roger Penske brought the business sense; with his car dealerships and ties to prominent brands like Shell and Porsche, he was almost constantly able to find the funding and personnel required to craft an impressive racing program. Donohue mentions it time and again in The Unfair Advantage: Any time there was some concern about money or timing or future plans, Roger Penske was able to step in with some kind of solution.

Donohue, then, was the backbone of the engineering side of Penske Racing. His degree from Brown University gave him a solid background in engineering basics, but his defining features clearly centered on his tenacity and creativity. He and Penske Racing's crew would spend hours every day testing a car on the skid pad, taking it out for lap after lap of various racing circuits, all in an effort to identify and solve any issues that were impacting the car's speed. If you read The Unfair Advantage, you'll see that displayed time and again, every time Penske or Donohue is handed a new car. Every car would go through intensive testing, and Donohue was generally able to pinpoint something about the car that needed improvement — if not multiple things. If he was confused about why a car wasn't responding the way he wanted, he'd log ever more hours in hopes of making it better.

“He was foundational for us,” Roger Penske reflected in a 2021 interview with Motor Sport Magazine. “He brought an engineering touch to the team, and to the cockpit. Mark was special, not just a big lead foot, but a driver who understood the technology, how to make his car better than anybody else’s. That’s why he won so many races. Up to that point the driver would turn up with his overalls, his gloves and his helmet and drive the car, but he wouldn’t know how much camber to put on the right front, what springs to run – and Mark brought all that to the table.”

But at the end of the 1973 racing season, Donohue announced his retirement. He had won six consecutive Can-Am events to take the championship behind the wheel of the Porsche 917/30 that he'd worked so hard to craft. He was convinced to race a Porsche 911 Carrera in the 1973/74 International Race of Champions series, which he also proceeded to dominate. One of the nicest men in motorsport, fans, drivers, and pundits paid him ample respect as he made the transition from racer to Penske team manager.

In his autobiography, Donohue explains that there were several reasons behind his retirement. Always worried that his success was due not to his driving but to his engineering skills, Donohue felt that he was past his prime — even if he did win two titles in his last year of racing. No matter how many people tried to tell him that his performance had leveled off instead of falling off, he worried that he would become one of those guys who kept racing it out to the bitter end, completely unaware that their best days were long gone.

He also notes that he felt overextended.

“As you get older something happens,” he wrote in the epilogue of The Unfair Advantage. “I don't know whether you become less durable, or you become wiser and less willing to put up with the pressure. But I'm sure I can't push myself as hard as I did five years ago. If it was just a matter of getting in the car and driving, it would have been easier, but all the outside hassles wore me down. When I ran out of energy, I had to keep going anyhow, because race dates can't be put off or rescheduled by a few weeks. Then, about the time I would think I had everything in hand, along would come a new car or a new guy who showed a lot of talent, and I'd have to work harder to be competitive.”

See, Donohue was never just racing. He was also putting in hours and hours back at Penske Racing's shop in Pennsylvania. He tested cars, prepped them for races, and experimented with his unfair advantages day after day, for hours at a time. All throughout his autobiography, he writes about the tenacity required to find solutions to stubborn problems; sometimes, it could take months trying to solve one specific problem before anyone could find a solution. And that was exhausting.

“All the enthusiasm and drive and interest that's needed to go through the same problems in car after car after car was gone,” Donohue explained. “You can only do that for so long. I found that I was almost hating it.”

With all those complex emotions, Donohue decided to take Dan Gurney to dinner. His fellow American racing legend had also retired from competition, instead taking on a role as team owner. It was there that Donohue realized he and Gurney had reached a similar mental plane: That for as much as they still both deeply enjoyed the act of racing, they both knew that if they couldn't dominate, they would be miserable. Worried that he was past his prime, Donohue made the bold call to hang up the helmet.

Roger Penske offered to hire Donohue as president and general manager of Penske Racing; it was a role he'd been playing even while he was actively competing, and he accepted after taking some time to think about it. But it wasn't easy.

“I had to face up to a new emotion that many retired drivers have to cope with,” he explained. “It was the mental anguish at not being able to get back in the car when necessary, to find out what was really happening out there. I had to listen to drivers complain about what the car wasn't doing right — when I was sure that I could take it out, as it was, and go a few seconds faster.”

But Mark Donohue was determined to make his retirement work… at least, until he received an offer he simply could not refuse.

Penske Racing enters Formula 1 full time

Mark Donohue wasn't the kind of man to flaunt his private life. In his autobiography, The Unfair Advantage, he includes nothing of his tumultuous, illness-ridden childhood, nor does he dive into the family he developed with his first wife, and then with his second. Those details only come from others.

Sam Posey offered a unique insight into that post-retirement Donohue in a Motor Sport Magazine article from 1998. Without racing to occupy him, the former racer bought a boat and a bachelor pad, then fell in love with an Atlanta socialite named Eden who he met while in a local hospital.

“Now their lives pointed beyond racing,” Posey wrote, “except Mark could not fully envisage what such a life could be. He was not easing gracefully into the role of team manager, nor did his salary (about a third of what he had earned driving) seem adequate. Drivers need time to get over racing, to find that another life can be fulfilling too. Mark never gave himself the chance.”

Donohue's retirement hadn't lasted a full year when Roger Penske called. Penske was once again forming a Formula 1 team, and would he be interested in coming out of retirement?

The answer, clearly, was yes.

“Problem was, Mark had retired too early,” said fellow racer Mario Andretti. “He was only 36 and it wasn’t out of his system. At the time I said he’d never be happy with himself. On the other hand, he then broke what to me is a golden rule: never come back.”

Mark Donohue agreed to once again climb behind the wheel for the final two Grands Prix of 1974. Over the winter, he'd marry girlfriend Eden and honeymoon in Jamaica. And then, come 1975, he'd join the Formula 1 field for a full season as a 38-year-old rookie. The goal? To bring Penske its first Grand Prix victory — and, perhaps, its first World Championship — using the same principles of investigation and analysis that had previously netted the duo success in so many other categories. If Roger Penske was going Formula 1 racing, Mark Donohue wanted to be his driver.

The two had had a spin in F1 together previously, when Penske rented out a McLaren M19 for Donohue to race at both Mosport and Watkins Glen. The first outing was fantastic; Donohue qualified eighth and went on to finish the race in third place, just behind Jackie Stewart and Ronnie Peterson. But rather than treat it as an opportunity to gloat, Donohue's reflection was humble: “I was probably lucky it rained,” he said. “In the dry, I might have been nowhere.”

Still, Formula 1 represented one of the final horizons that the Penske/Donohue duo had yet to conquer. The odds were against them, competing in an unfamiliar series on a set of unfamiliar race tracks in an unfamiliar atmosphere — but that was likely part of the appeal.

The organization itself was extremely small, with just a handful of employees. In 1973, Roger Penske purchased a UK-based race car manufacturer called McRae Cars Ltd and determined that it was there where he would build his Formula 1 machines. He asked his Can-Am team manager Heinz Hofer to serve as F1 team manager, and Geoff Ferris to serve as the chief engineer and designer. Karl Kainhofer signed on as chief mechanic and engine builder, and Donohue would drive the car they'd created, called the Penske PC1.

In Motor Sport Magazine, the PC1 was described as “smart in turn-out” but “conservative” in its approach, with coil-sprung suspension and outboard disc brakes at the front. The writer notes that the PC1 went through heaps of testing at Penske's personal tracks before it made its debut in the final two races of the season, in Canada and the United States.

Those events of the 1974 season were a bit of a misery for Donohue and Penske; in the first race, Donohue finished 12th, and in the second, he retired.

Penske determined to solve its issues over the winter before the start of the 1975 season, though it was coming into the sport against some significant odds — which included a very negative attitude from the British racing press. As Denis Jenkinson wrote, “When I refer to these as American teams a friend of mine in California gives a hollow laugh, for the only things American about them are the dollars that are paying for it all and the drivers… Both of today’s USAinspired teams use Cosworth V8 engines and Hewland gearboxes, and don’t try to tell me that a Cosworth DFV is in reality a Ford engine and that Ford is American, so therefore the Cosworth V8 is an American engine, for I just will not believe it, just as I will not believe that a Lotus 72 is a John Player Special. The Penske car has a long and complicated name which is that of its major financial backer, but the name is too long to get on a badge, almost too long to get on the side of the car, and certainly too long to put in any historical table of results, always assuming it gets results.”

Results, it turned out, were hard to come by.

In the first nine races of the 15-event championship, Donohue suffered from four retirements. Though he was able to place in the top-10 four other times, only one of those finishes — a fifth place in Sweden — was worthy of points, because at that time, F1 only awarded points to the top six finishers. After another retirement in France, the team made the decision to scrap the problematic PC1 and instead modify a March 751 chassis to look something like the team's original car. Onlookers described the PC1 as being beautiful but looking unwieldy and erratic; the hope was that the more well-understood March would provide a more stable, reliable ride.

The team was rewarded the first time out with a season-equalling best finish of fifth at the British Grand Prix — but in Germany, it was another retirement, where Donohue suffered from multiple tire failures.

One of the most perplexing parts of Penske Racing's foray into Formula 1 is how little we know about it. While Donohue shared all the nitty-gritty details of his development of other Penske Racing machines in his autobiography, that book came to an end just before his return to racing in Formula 1. We don't know what kind of testing Donohue was doing, what was wrong with the PC1. We don't know much about the decision to swap to March, or what Penske Racing did to make it their own.

But we do know that the 1975 German Grand Prix was the last race Donohue would ever contest.

Mark Donohue's death and the lawsuits that followed

Two weeks after the German Grand Prix, the Formula 1 circus wound its way through the mountains to the Osterreichring, located in the tiny town of Spielberg, Austria — and it was looking to be another weekend to forget for Mark Donohue and his Penske Racing team. He only managed to qualify 21st of 29 cars on the grid, over three seconds slower than polesitter Niki Lauda. Sunday dawned dismal and gray, with storms threatening to sweep through in time for the start.

That morning, there was a brief warm-up session that drivers could take advantage of in order to hone their cars for the race's conditions. It was during that session that Donohue's Penske March 751 suffered a tire failure at the Vöest-Hügel turn. It was a fast right-hander, and Donohue likely would have been driving flat out or close to it when the tire went flat.

Immediately, the March barrelled through four rows of catch fencing, over an Armco barrier, and through several promotional billboards. One marshal was killed and another seriously injured, the car was completely destroyed, but amazingly, Donohue was able to walk out of the medical center.

After being briefly knocked unconscious behind the wheel, Donohue received help from three fellow drivers — Emerson Fittipaldi, Bob Evans, and Hans-Joachim Stuck — who pulled him from the car and removed his helmet and balaclava to allow a paramedic to treat him. But he came to at the scene, had a lucid conversation with the drivers, and then it was off to the medical center for a further check-up. Aside from some bruises and body aches, Donohue was deemed to be in perfect health.

He returned to the pits to give the team a debrief of what happened: The left front tire blew as he was racing along at around 160 miles per hour. He wasn't quite sure why. But as the day progressed, he began to complain of a headache that seemed to be getting worse. It was likely assumed that it was the impact of the crash finally catching up to him, though there still didn't seem to be much to worry about.

But then Donohue collapsed and started to convulse.

Donohue was rushed from the track to a hospital in Graz, where Dr. Fritz Heppner, a professor of neurosurgery, took Donohue into the surgical theater for a three-hour operation for what was quickly determined to be a brain hemorrhage. Dr. Heppner removed a blood clot, but when the surgery was over, the driver who went under the knife didn't wake up. For two days, Donohue held on with help from various machines. It was long enough to allow his wife Eden and his father to arrive in Austria.

They were sitting at his bedside along with Roger Penske when Donohue drew his last breath on August 19, 1975.

“This is a great personal shock to me,” Penske was quoted as saying in the AP.

Sam Posey, a friend and colleague of Donohue's, was hit hard by the death of his compatriot.

“My wife-to-be, Ellen, and I were watching TV in her apartment in Los Angeles when we heard the news,” he wrote in Motor Sport Magazine back in 1998.

“In those years, a lot of the drivers we knew had been killed, but I always found ways to rationalise it and keep going. This was different. I knew Mark was better than I was, and smarter. Luckier, even. If it could happen to him, it could happen to me. I couldn’t escape that logic. I turned to Ellen, and she looked at me and said, ‘You’re going to quit, aren’t you?’ And I did quit. I continued racing saloons, but I stopped driving open-wheelers. The light at the end of the tunnel had gone out.”

To call Donohue's death a tragedy would likely be an understatement. Friends shared memories of him, noting his kindness, his intelligence, his warmth. They spoke fondly of his seemingly innate ability to pinpoint issues with a car, and his willingness to share feedback with younger, less experienced racers. While Donohue had had bad accidents in the past, the very nature of his fatal wreck seemed uniquely cruel: That he had first been able to walk away, only to die soon after. It was hard to know where to start rebuilding lives and teams without him.

In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution in the immediate aftermath of her husband's death, Eden Donohue stated, “I don't want anyone to ask me why he returned to racing. That is what Mark wanted. That is what made him happy.”

Several months later, in February of 1976, a lawsuit emerged against Goodyear Tires and Bell Helmets, alleging that both companies played a role in Donohue's death. The suit was filed by David Lawton, executor of Donohue's estate, on behalf of widow Eden — and according to attorney Lonard Decof, the goal was to pursue $20 million in damages based on the former driver's lost potential earnings.

The suit alleged that Goodyear's tires had failed to withstand “reasonably foreseeable stress and strain conditions while racing at high speeds;” of failing to test, examine, and inspect the tires for potential flaws; and of failing to warn Donohue and Penske Racing of any potential danger with the tires in question.

It also claimed that Bell Helmets failed to adequately and properly guard Donohue from serious injury, while it named Roger Penske as having failed to provide the proper parts for the car he was driving.

“There will be a lot of proof presented with reference to the claims,” Decof stated. “We intend to show that the tire blew out on its own, not because of negligence on Donohue's part. We'll be presenting expert testimony to show that.”

To defend themselves, Goodyear and Penske brought in drivers like Mario Andretti, A. J. Foyt, Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda, and Dan Gurney, likely with the intention of testifying that major accidents like Donohue's are tragic but not uncommon in the world of racing. The prosecution brought in mangled remains of Donohue's tire for jury consideration when it hit the courts in 1984 — but the judge made a critical decision. He refused to allow any testimony or evidence that was not directly related to the remains of Donohue's race car.

The trial itself took seven weeks, during which time countless racers shared their experiences. Dan Gurney testified that he'd investigated the remains of the tire and felt that it had been cut by “some sort of debris” at the track. Niki Lauda testified that, in investigating the crash site immediately after the wreck, he spotted one large piece of tire and other smaller pieces of tire in the location where Donohue crashed through the guardrails. He claimed that any bubbling seen in the rubber was “no problem” to racers, that tire degradation of that sort was normal and expected.

After deliberation, a Superior Court jury found that Goodyear was indeed liable in Donohue's death; it claimed that the crash occurred because the left front tire of Donohue's race car was defectively manufactured. Goodyear was tasked to pay a whopping $9.6 million to the Donohue family — the largest reward ever returned in Rhode Island state court at the time. The jury stated that it arrived at that figure by assuming how much money Mark Donohue could have earned in his life had he lived. Donohue's widow Eden was to split that sum with Donohue's children from his first marriage.

Mario Andretti was forbidden from offering his perspective on why the tire failed, as the judge claimed Goodyear had failed to establish him as a tire expert — and speaking to media after the ruling, he stated, “I'm so mad I can't even think straight.” The truth, he said, “wasn't brought out here.”

“Goodyear didn't have a chance from the beginning because the judge made up his mind that we couldn't talk about anything that was pertinent to the case. The truth and the fact is that the tire didn't blow out because it was faulty; it blew out because of debris on the track.”

Further, a man named Burge Hulett who was a friend of Donohue's and who had testified for Goodyear added, “There's not a shred of doubt in my mind — this has done tremendous damage to Mark's reputation and racing in general.”

Goodyear initially appealed the ruling but ultimately withdrew it in April of 1986, two years after the initial ruling was decided. The $9.6 million sum it paid out would be the equivalent of over $28 million today.

For its own part, Bell Helmets decided to settle with the Donohue family out of court for $75,000. Penske Racing, which had been mentioned in the initial suit, was ultimately not required to defend itself in court.

Penske Racing persists, and John Watson wins

Between the death of one of his closest confidantes and the ongoing lawsuits attempting to fix blame on someone or something, no one would have been particularly shocked if Roger Penske had decided that he was done with the racing game, at least as far as Formula 1 was concerned. While he wasn't always immediately successful in other series, there was something particularly draining about committing to international competition, in trying to master this all-new world.

But that's not what Penske did. Instead, he vowed that his Formula 1 team would continue. Penske Racing still had a mission to accomplish.

Mark Donohue had died in Austria, the 12th race of a 14-event calendar. Penske stayed away from the next race, the Italian Grand Prix, but it hoped to return to the paddock for the season finale at Watkins Glen. Roger Penske wanted to continue competing in Formula 1 — and he had just the driver in mind to do it: John Watson, who was racing with Surtees.

I had the pleasure of speaking to John Watson about his experience with Penske, so I'll let him tell you just how the invitation to compete for the team came to be.

JOHN WATSON: Being in the paddock, and those days the paddock was a more open, friendly place than it is today. So you'd walk around and you'd talk to other teams, competitors and form friendships, relationships. And one of those was with Penske's team.

At the time the team was run by a guy called Heinz Hofer, who was Swiss, had been a ski instructor and he'd met Roger on a ski holiday years earlier. And Heinz was a really lovely, lovely guy, super man. And we, I think maybe clicked in terms of friendship and just enjoying each other's company, whichever. And I think Heinz maybe said to me at some point in the middle of '75, he said, "John, what are your plans for the future?" I said, "Well, Heinz, I don't know." He said, "Well, look, keep us in mind if there's any change coming up, please let us know."

So it went along that sort of very easy open wheeling kind of discussion. And then sadly, in the Austrian Grand Prix of that year, Mark Donohue had gone off, I think it was a Sunday morning warmup, and he had a tire failure, from memory, and he tragically passed away. And very shortly thereafter, communications with Roger and the Penske team opened up. And the team I was driving for at that time had not competed in all the Grand Prix, and they weren't going to be doing the final races in America. So I was asked, would I like to join the team? Would I be happy to become a member of the Penske operation? And I was delighted to be able to accept, because I felt that there was a step forward.

I think that by reputation, what Roger was doing in motor racing was always considered to be first class. The team, the quality of the people, the whole Penske operation, as it is today, was run at an extremely high level, a very professional level, a big commitment. So for me it was an opportunity which I felt there's no way I can turn this down. And I was delighted to be able to do so, take up the opportunity.

So I think the first race I did with Roger's team was in Watkins Glen, the USA Grand Prix. And the car I was going to drive was going to be their version, if you like, of the car that they had been running, which was a March 751. So they made a, you might call it a facsimile of that car, and that became the Penske PC3. And that was the introduction to my association with Roger and the Penske team.

Hailing from Northern Ireland, Watson had only been competing in F1 for a little under two years at that point, bouncing between a handful of different outfits before he was approached by Penske — and the American team instantly set the standard for what he'd consider to be a professional racing organization in the future.

JOHN WATSON: Well, my first season in Formula 1 was 1974, my first full season, and I was driving for a small private team, which was based in London, and they ran a single entry for me, which was a Brabham. Then in 1975, I drove for John Surtees at which time, again, it was a small one car entry.

So this was not any different to anything that I'd had previously. I think the difference was that the Penske team brought with it the element of what has been almost synonymous with the Penske motor racing legacy, which is a very high level of professionalism, a very high level of presentation. Everything is done to an extremely high level.

So for me, this was a step upwards, a step forward. And again, it was a single car entry. And at that time, that was something that was accessible in Formula 1, not today, but certainly single car entries were not unknown. And I was delighted to be able to be a part of a team working with a small group of people, which is what I'd done with my previous two experiences. But the difference was that I think what Roger's team was trying to achieve was, again, at a level above the previous two experiences. Because they were a factory team. But because of Roger really, and because of his vision, his expectation, you're not going into a team that's there to make up the numbers, you're going into a team that is there to achieve and to try and win races.

Speaking with Watson was fascinating, because he opened up on what it was like to race for an American team — and what he felt he could bring to Penske Racing.

John:

Okay, I won. I think the biggest difference that Roger and the team experienced with me was I was a European driver. And if you wish, the conventions of racing in America in the various championships that were held there, as opposed to let's say, Formula 1 in my day was probably very much more a European-based championship. It's changed obviously now, but in the '70s it was certainly very much European-based.

And I think there was a philosophical difference in the approach of European drivers to Formula 1 than maybe... And it would've come down to partly cultural, even stupid things such as quality of life or lifestyle. Because remember in the '70s, America, your society was a million miles ahead of the rest of the world. The affluence, for example, first time I went to America was 1973. I'd never seen a McDonald's or a Burger King or shopping malls. All that was like, hold on, what's this all about? I've never been... I've never seen this before.

So what I would've brought to Penske would've been a European approach to life, a European approach to racing. And that unquestionably was a different approach in race to how Roger and Mark would've gone racing fundamentally in Europe.

Roger in that era had raced at Le Mans as a driver, and he had entered a team at Le Mans, I think in 1971. And Roger still wants to win Le Mans. It's the one race he still wants to win. And that is probably... Until he wins Le Mans he'll never feel that he's fulfilled his ambition of a Penske car and driver standing on the winners podium.

So I would've brought a European perspective, and that was different. And it was probably something that the team needed, because up until that point the team had been very much an American philosophy, and all Mark's expertise, experience, ability, whatever, was very much USA-based. And Mark was an outstanding race driver, whatever you put him in, but I think you take him out of America and you put him into somewhere down on the South Coast of England in a little place called Poole. Hold on, hold on, particularly at this time, it was a world apart.

And it takes time to adapt. Because all the functions and the things in life that you take for granted, in the '70s living in Reading Pennsylvania, where the team was based. Or I don't know, I think Mark lived in Reading, I'm not sure. But if you imagine, going to big cities in America like New York, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami. The first time I went to America, I flew into Miami to go to Daytona Beach, my chin hit the ground. I was like, I can't believe it.

Because the differences between America at that time and the rest of the world was enormous. It was just enormous. And I think for Mark coming over to Europe, and some of the team members came from America, but mostly the actual team members were comprised of people that were European-based. So the culture of the team, while it might've been ostensibly American in that, that's the name above the door, and here's the principle, the team owner, gradually, gradually the culture within the team would've become more Europeanized, and I would've been a part of that culture.

Penske Racing put its head down, determined to develop a new car for the 1976 season — which it would contest from start to finish with John Watson as lead driver. The season kicked off with a brand-new car called the PC3, which had been modeled after both the PC1 and the March 751 that had preceded it. The PC3 made its debut at Watkins Glen in 1975, though a technical failure prevented it from taking to the grid. But the issues were ideally somewhat ironed out in time for the start of ‘76.

I say ‘somewhat,' because a fuel system failure turned into a fire that wiped out the PC3 at the season opener, the Brazilian Grand Prix. Watson was able to score some points by finishing fifth in South Africa — but he finished so many laps in arrears of the leaders at Long Beach that he wasn't even classified in the final standings. A retirement in Spain was followed by two top-10s that were nevertheless outside of the points in Belgium and Monaco.

Penske Racing announced that it would introduce a new machine, the PC4, for the Swedish Grand Prix. This updated machine had a low monocoque tub with hip radiators; after retiring from Sweden, its wheelbase was extended, its aerodynamics were changed, and suddenly, the car was transformed.

In the French and British Grands Prix, Watson took the first podiums of his career, with back-to-back third places. For Watson, the PC4 was a revelation.

ELIZABETH BLACKSTOCK: What were the strengths of the PC4?

JOHN WATSON: I think the car was just ultimately a better car in every sense. In terms of the car, the level of grip, the level of balance of the car, drivability, consistency, all the things that you need in a race car to start being more competitive and ultimately to start winning races. So the PC4 became a very good car, a very competitive car from about July and onwards, until the end of the season.

Though it was another points-less finish in Germany, Penske Racing nevertheless felt confident in the machine it had created — and it headed into the Austrian Grand Prix with a certain sense of trepidation mixed with expectation. The Osterreichring was, after all, the place where previous driver Donohue had sustained his fatal injuries, and the race itself would be taking place on the first anniversary of Donohue's death.

But the Penske PC4 was strong. Capable. And John Watson was behind its wheel when that car took the checkered flag in first position.

I'll let Watson walk you through just what that meant to him.

ELIZABETH BLACKSTOCK: And that win in Austria must have been, that's your first win in F1. That's the team's first win. How did that win come about? Describe to me the day and what you were feeling.

JOHN WATSON: It's a combination of things. It was a funny day because it was... Well first of all, we were quite competitive in qualifying. I think we're on the front row of the grid, if I remember. And the day started, it had rained and the track was part wet, part dry. So very difficult conditions. And there were about four or five cars in a leading group of cars. And the lead was swapping and changing all the way through. But finally, maybe after what 15 or so laps the race settled down into a pattern, and with me leading the race.

And from that point forward, I was able to control my pace. And I was sufficiently fast to remain ahead of the competition. And the car was a perfect car throughout that race. It did all that I would want a car to do. The car was competitive, it was consistent, and I was able to drive it in a way, which I like to drive a car.

And you wonder why do you win races? And actually winning a race is in some respects, the easiest part of being a racing driver. But it's getting to the level of being able to win a race.

It's finding that level rather than just simply winning it. And it's the evolution of the car. It was a combination on that day of the car, tires, believe it or not, tires even in those days played a part, engineering in the car, I did a very good job. Remember there were no pit stops, nothing of that nature in Formula 1 at that time.

So once the race began, the control of the race was very much more in the hands of the driver than it is today. You'd simply, you'd start the race, you would have a full tank of fuel, one set of tires, and you had to then sort of modulate your driving to ensure that you didn't overwork the tires. In other words, maybe push too hard too quickly. And it was a different style of racing, a different sort of philosophy as a racing driver, is how do you get the best out of your car and maintain a level of performance from the start all the way through until the finish.

It meant everything. On a personal level it was the fulfillment of a childhood dream. I come from Northern Ireland, which is a small part of United Kingdom, and I had a childhood dream. And coming from Northern Ireland, there wasn't a huge legacy of professional Formula 1 racing drivers.

I consider myself to be a pathfinder. And to actually fulfill that dream and stand on the podium as the winner of a Grand Prix with a garland around your neck. And Stirling Moss, I think was conducting the interviews.

It was a surreal moment. And is one of the pivotal points of any racing driver's life, the first time you win a race, win a Grand Prix. There are lots of things in life that we have memories of for the first time. Listen, the first time you kissed a man, Elizabeth, do you remember that? Do you remember it?

ELIZABETH BLACKSTOCK: I do.

JOHN WATSON: Well, there you are. Okay. Okay. It's the same thing in a sense, it's a memory which is indelible. And whatever else you might achieve in your life, it remains indelible.

But for all the celebration, all the joy, Watson was keenly aware of what he referred to as a “sense of irony.”

OTHER STUFF HERE:

JOHN WATSON: I think there was a sense of irony almost. Because precisely one year ago, Roger and the Penske team had lost the driver who was synonymous with Roger's racing. Over many, many years in Indycar, in Can-Am, in Trans-Am, whatever, Roger and Mark were two people joined at the hip. And it was one of those partnerships which, okay, you can think of other wonderful partnerships like Jim Clark and Colin Chapman and Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrrell. Niki Lauda and Ferrari.

So you have these amazing... Your partnerships. And when all of a sudden that partnership is broken, as it was with Mark and Roger, a year, in 1975. Then we come back to Austria. Okay. I was not a part of the team when that tragedy occurred. But I know that Roger and Heinz and team members must have had a sense of foreboding when they turned up in Austria. Because all of a sudden, while they might compartmentalize all their emotions, which is what you have to do, frankly, they are human beings after all. And maybe in moments of privacy or whatever they might have had reflection and thought about a year ago, our driver died as a consequence of an accident. And while it wasn't the fault of the team, it was an incident that occurred. And look, we're only human. We're only human.

So I think that there's a lot of reflection from the team, but as I have mentioned likewise and earlier, motorsport is a business. It's not just about let's go racing for fun at weekends. It's hard-nosed professional, this is the real deal. This is the real deal.

And I think that everybody performed at the highest professional level that would be expected of Roger's team. And I say, ironically, we walked out of that race the winners of the Austrian Grand Prix. And honestly, even now, I think about it, it's the irony. How did that happen? Why did it happen? Are there forces beyond what we understand or can communicate about or with? Why would we have left Austria in '75 after such a terrible outcome, and then one year later walk out of Austria, the winners? How do you rationalize that?

Penske Racing was not able to achieve that feat again in the season, though that victory in Austria would set the team up well for a fifth-place finish in the World Constructors’ Championship that even two retirements, two points-free finishes, and one sixth-place at Watkins Glen couldn't shake. The team had made major ground.

But at the end of 1976, the team made a critical decision: Penske Racing would withdraw from Formula 1.

It wasn't a personal decision, or one to do with performance; rather, in a Motor Sport Magazine interview, Roger Penske stated, “It wasn’t to do with the racing. It was a commercial decision based on the few benefits of us doing Formula 1. We are the last American team to win a grand prix, with John Watson in Austria in ’76, but look… we could have gone back to it but there are only so many hours in a day. I’m a hands-on guy, and I wanted to do what’s best for the company and that’s to focus on racing in the US. So that’s what we did. Formula 1 doesn’t have so much to offer us commercially, for an American team. I mean, racing in the US, we can bring customers and employees to California, to Florida, to Ohio, all over, and we cannot get that benefit from Formula 1.”

Watson and I spoke about the team folding, and what happened next.

JOHN WATSON: I think there was maybe elements of that. I don't know whether there was anything that carried forward, because once when Roger then stopped his commitment in Formula 1 at the end of '76, I was able to find another team. It was rather late in the day, but I found another team, by which time again, formula 1 is beginning to evolve. It's becoming a more, I would say, professional sport at every level. And I went from Roger's team into the Brabham team, which was owned by Bernie Ecclestone.

And again, I was familiar with some of the people that were in that team. And people like Bernie Ecclestone and Roger Penske, and even someone like Ron Dennis are extremely high achievers. These are people... These are not your normal everyday run-of-the-mill people. These are highly motivated, highly-driven, high achievers. And their objectives are, they're not there to say make up numbers, they're there to go out and win races or win championships, whichever.

So the move at the end of '76 into Brabham, was almost as an extension of what I'd enjoyed at Penske. So it was a disappointment, I have to say, because I felt that Roger, I know the reasons why he decided to stop, and I know that I was disappointed, and I know he was probably even more disappointed. But again, it was a pragmatic judgment on his part. But I know that had Penske continued in Formula 1, they would've gone on to win more races and arguably to make up, win a world championship. Because that was the quality of the Penske operation. But we never got to find that out, that was the disappointment. We never got to find that out.

ELIZABETH BLACKSTOCK: You mentioned that you know why Penske's F1 program folded? Is that something that you can talk about?

JOHN WATSON: So middle '70s Roger was on a mission, and the mission was fundamentally the beginning of the construction of the Penske Empire as we now know it. Motor racing was his passion, but also it was a tool for Roger, if you like, to showcase his acumen in other areas.

So he used Formula 1, Can-Am, IndyCar, Trans-Am, whatever, to present a car in a way, which probably nobody had ever previously done. And presentation of his cars was a very, very major part of the whole Penske philosophy. To this day, it's still the same.

So the motor racing, at the one hand was... Roger was a very good driver, make no mistake. Roger was an excellent race driver. But he again, used pragmatism and he started this business career and he was an exceptionally good networker. And motor racing was a part of his networking, if you like, plan to grow his commercial business empire. And at the end of '76, he had to make some decisions, because he was racing in IndyCar, racing in Can-Am, racing in Formula 1. And he couldn't, if you like, handle all three or four racing programs and at the same time what he was doing in the growth of his business empire. And also he had just recently remarried. He met a lovely lady called Kathy, and they'd gotten married a year or two earlier. There's only so... Roger is a Superman.

Penske sold its remaining chassis to ATS Racing and Interscope Racing, the team returned to the United States, and in 1977, the former Penske team manager Heinz Hofer was killed in a road accident leaving a dinner with John Watson. Watson's win, to this day, remains the last win for an American team in Formula 1.

ELIZABETH BLACKSTOCK: Does it mean anything to you that you are still the last man to win a race for an American F1 team?

JOHN WATSON: I wish it was more widely acknowledged, because I think it's a very important statistic that... Formula 1 in America is right now very, very popular. There are two things that are lacking. One is an American team, which is being addressed by Cadillac, and the other is an American Formula 1 driver, but a driver of the level of the current best in Formula 1.

I can think of few bigger “what ifs” in motorsport than Penske Racing's failed foray into Formula 1. What if Roger Penske had decided against competing in F1? What if Mark Donohue had remained retired, focusing instead on running the team? What if he had survived that crash in Austria? What if Penske Racing had continued in Formula 1? Where would American motorsport be today?

I know that, personally, my life would look much different. I distinctly remember my first-ever writing assignment at school; we were tasked with writing an essay on a deceased person. I thought and thought and asked my parents for advice and then thought some more before I ultimately decided to write that essay on Mark Donohue. I was just a kid at the time, maybe in first grade, but Donohue's story stuck with me: The quiet, humble engineer who helped craft Penske Racing into a dominant force in all kinds of motorsport around the world. Decades have passed, and I still haven't stopped thinking about Donohue and his contributions to racing. I also know that I'm not the only one.

When Penske returned to America, its successes kept coming. Roger Penske now owns IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He's notched more victories at the Indy 500 as a team owner than any other. His NASCAR team is strong, and he's practically unstoppable at major endurance races in America. Team Penske is an institution in American motorsport unlike anything else. It's just hard not to wonder where the team would be today if Mark Donohue had been around to guide it to even greater heights.