DJR Team Penske has come a long way in a relatively short time. Over 20 Supercars Race wins, 2017 Teams Championship and an equal favourite to take the 2018 Supercars Drivers Championship.

All this in four years.

Steering the DJR Team Penske ship in Australian is Ryan Story. Although Story does not have the pit lane heritage of Dick Johnson, Garry Rogers, Roland Dane or the Jones Brothers as a Team Principal, he has been the one who has astutely worked on the creation of the new look DJR Team Penske brand since 2013.

The Race Torque sat down with Story at Bathurst where he revealed some fascinating insights into the background of how the USA based powerhouse chose Dick Johnson Racing as the best partner to enter Supercars.

Roger Penske had made some significant business purchases in the lead up to 2013, establishing the corporation in Australia and New Zealand. An aggressive expansion policy included purchases of the Western Star Trucks, MAN and Dennis Eagle truck distributorships.

Not long after Penske expanded further and purchased MTU and Detroit Diesel from Daimler Benz, giving the corporation a substantial footprint in the transport industry ‘Down Under’. Marketing of these businesses was to follow a very well established US practice by Penske of using motor sport as the primary vehicle. However in 2013, Penske’s Australian concern had no interests in Australian Motor Sport – but things were starting to take shape.

“In mid-2013, the Marketing Manager for Penske Commercial Vehicles, as it was called then, reached out and handed a business card to our Team Manager Richard Swan at the Gold Coast 600 event. He told Richard that Roger Penske wants to buy the team and get whoever is in charge to ring him and he will organise it!,” Story recalls with a hint of amusement. “So of course Richie brought the card to me and my bulls..t detector was immediately off the scale. Not much happened for about a week then I received a call from the Penske guy who had engaged with Richie.

“He and I spoke for about 10 minutes and he explained how Roger had business interests in Australia and wanted to be involved with racing and how he potentially saw a great fit with Dick Johnson Racing. He concluded by saying that Roger would give me a call. My bulls…t detector was still off the scale even after this call!”

Whilst somewhat skeptical, Story discussed the initial conversation with Dick Johnson and Steve Brabeck and suggested that the focus just remained on the Supercars season at hand and not to spend too much time thinking about the ‘what if’s.’

Story, too, was heavily focused on not only the rebuilding of the team after two very difficult seasons in 2011 and ’12, but his own health was suffering and he was due to undergo major surgery.

But as fate would have it, as Story packed to make the trip to hospital a momentous phone call came from a USA number.

“I remember the day clearly. I was at home preparing to head into the hospital. I had a bag packed and was rushing around to get things ready and the phone rang with a +1 number. It was Roger Penske. We spoke for about 20 minutes and throughout that time he was pitching to me the Team Penske story and his plans. It was not the other way around – It wasn’t me trying to sell Dick Johnson Racing. It was Roger saying this is how we go about our racing, this is why we want to be involved in Supercars, and this is why I want to be involved with Dick Johnson Racing. I want to fly you and Dick to the USA… We will send the plane to get you and all these sorts of things. My head was spinning at 100 miles per hour after the call. And I still had to get to the hospital for surgery!” Story recalls of the extraordinary first conversation with Roger.

So plans were put in place for Dick Johnson, Steve Brabeck, Ryan and Campbell Little, who was working for DJR at the time, to head to the USA to meet with Roger and Tim Cindric and Team Penske.

“I remember vividly writing copious notes from the phone call, photographing them and texting them to Dick and Steve as a record of the conversation. I then arrived at the hospital and as the pre-surgery procedure got underway, said to anesthetist:

‘Do you know who Roger Penske is?’
‘Sort of,’ came the reply.
‘Red and White Indy cars,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah,’ said the specialist.’”

So Story laid down the rules of engagement of his procedure.

“’Listen, he has just called me and told me he wants me in America in two weeks’ time so whatever you do, don’t mess this up!’”

History will record that the doctors did not, and the DJR crew flew to the USA some ten days later.

“I decided we would fly commercially and not take up the offer of the Penske Corporate jet, and although it has never been raised, I think he thought that was commendable. People don’t usually turn down Roger’s offer of the jet!”

And so began a remarkable journey for the team as they met with Roger, then traveled to Mooresville to meet with Team Penske President Tim Cindric and get a feeling for the scope of the 400+ strong IndyCar and NASCAR operation.

“We were sitting at this massive board room table in the superbly presented Team Penske Board Room. This group of Aussies sitting at one end and a group of high powered Penske people at the other end. There could not have been a greater distance between us at the table even if we had tried! It was never my intention to be making the sales pitch to Penske given the experience either side of me but that is in fact what happened. I spoke about the series, the rules and the competitive landscape. Amazingly Tim Cindric had read the Supercars Operations Manual from start to finish – which is more than many in the Pit lane have ever done – and immediately demonstrated a deep understanding of the Supercars category. I was fielding most of the questions.” Story continues.

The next step was for Tim Cindric together with Jamie Allison, who was at the time head of Ford Performance, to visit Australia for the last event of 2013 at Homebush.

“Tim and Jamie met with Tickford (then Prodrive Racing) and the word got out quickly that Roger Penske was sniffing around and every team, bar one, in Pit Lane made a pitch.”

What was not known in Pit Lane was that DJR had been in dialogue for some months with Team Penske. Story and Cindric had forged a good working relationship and were in regular contact with each other. More importantly, the tight knit group of people who were aware of what had occurred in the previous months had kept the encounter under wraps. But there was a long road ahead before the deal was put to bed.

“We were of the opinion that Penske entering Supercars would be a good thing no matter if it was with Dick Johnson Racing or not. If it wasn’t with us, so be it. We had paid down our debt and moving forward could run as decent mid-level team which was a hell of a different situation to what the place had been like when I came into it.” Story explained, candidly.

“It did all play out and we made the decision in May 2014 and Roger came out to Australia. We did the deal on a handshake and then Tim Cindric and I nutted out the fine details and contingencies. Throughout that time, Marcos Ambrose had been in the background and it was always the intention that he would be a part in however it played out.

“There was a huge amount of media speculation flying around but we purposely distanced ourselves from it and then agreed to make the announcement on the Monday after the Sandown 500. This put a considerable distance between our May meeting and the actual launch.

“We got to Sandown having been through the process of designing logos, sorting out what the team name was going to be. Was it to be – Team Penske DJR, or DJR Team Penske and so on? Roger himself made his mind up saying it is Dick Johnson Racing and Team Penske, so DJR Team Penske is what is became. It was a tumultuous period dealing with the media, the speculation of what the team would look like and ultimately for 2015 scaling back to one car. But it was a time that really set the foundations for where the team is today.” Story said.

From that Monday on, the frenzy surrounding the team was at fever pitch.

TO BE CONTINUED:

Click back to TheRaceTorque.com tomorrow morning (Friday, 2 November) as the story continues – including the ‘Marcos Ambrose Experiment’ and how the team began to build its strength, recruited a guru engineer and became title contenders in just a few short years.

“To his eternal credit, if it was not for Marcos Ambrose committing to this program in 2014, I doubt Roger Penske would be in the sport today,” A very forthright Story said of the major upheaval the newly formed team went thorough…

WORDS: Dale Rodgers
IMAGES: DJR Team Penske / Supplied