Motor racing mogul Roger Penske predicts a big future at his Supercars team next year when they have an all Kiwi lineup of Scott McLaughlin and Fabian Coulthard.
Penske, who is one of the most powerful figures in motor racing in the world, with his Team Penske winning the Indianapolis 500 an incredible 16 times.
He has teamed up with Dick Johnson Racing in Supercars last year and while progress has been slow this season with Coulthard and Scott Pye, Penske, who has an estimated net worth of $2.72 billion through his transportation company, is expecting better results next year with the all New Zealand lineup.
“When I pick drivers I don’t normally pick them because of where they live, because I have somewhat of an international group when you look at the US, it’s like the United Nations somedays,” Penske joked at Bathurst on Saturday, making his first visit to the iconic race.
“I’m excited to see Scott join our team, they’re both from New Zealand and it’s ironic, we didn’t plan it that way.
“We’d love to have people not only in New Zealand, but in Australia and around the world support the team and we’re going to have a great team.
“The long term plan is with the two drivers we’ll have next year and we’re excited.
“They’ve both shown what they can do on the race track and maybe it’s good they’re from New Zealand, I don’t know.”
This season DJR Team Penske have failed to win a race and Tim Cindric, the president of Team Penske says it important that everything is going better for when McLaughlin arrives next season.
“I think we were on the right trajectory, but mid season it seemed like we’d made a lot of mistakes,” the American said.
“We haven’t performed and I think if you’d ask the team, they’d say we haven’t performed at times.
“Without a doubt there’s been times where we’ve learnt that we need a better process, but what I really like is the attitude and the approach the people have. We won’t make the same mistake twice and once you see that, you continue to feel stronger as an organisation in terms of results.
“You’ll see this finish on a high note, that’s certainly the expectation and to build on that going forward.
“Obviously with McLaughlin coming on, we’re very motivated to be sure that he has the right environment because he is more than capable of doing the job.
“He’s a proven winner and is someone who’s going to come into our team with high expectations and we want to meet those expectations.
“We started the year where we thought we were, we’ve maybe dropped a little bit during the year, but I feel good about where we are right now.”
