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Roger Penske had tried to win 23 different Daytona 500s before Ryan Newman got the job done for his car owner this year.

What would Penske, one of the leading figures in the world of motorsports, have done if Newman hadn't won?

"I would have come back next year and tried again," Penske said after Newman gave him his first victory in a restrictor-plate race in NASCAR's top series.

Penske, who marked his 71st birthday on Wednesday, got an early present from Newman, with a big assist from teammate Kurt Busch. Busch used his No. 2 Dodge to push Newman's No. 12 to the lead on the final lap, leading to a 1-2 finish for the team.

Add an impressive 15th-place finish for NASCAR rookie Sam Hornish Jr. in his first Daytona 500 appearance and it's hard to imagine a better start to the season for Penske's team.

Now, his three drivers come to California Speedway - a track that Penske built before selling it to International Speedway Corporation - looking to sustain that momentum.

"We started this season with all three drivers, all three crew chiefs, the engineering folks together and said, 'Look, we've got to make this one effort,'" said Penske, the man known in racing circles as "The Captain."

"Kurt and Ryan do different things Monday through Friday," Penske said. "But I can tell you now at the racetrack, the three drivers get together after every practice, and it's made a huge difference in communication. If you can't win yourself, you want your teammate to win. I've always said we win as a team and we lose as a team."

That, however, has not always been the case with Penske's stock-car team. When Newman and Rusty Wallace were teammates, they did not always keep those lines of communication open.

"We struggled getting the cooperation between our two drivers a couple of years back," said Don Miller, who retired as co-owner of Penske's stock car operations following last season. "It was difficult because even though you are in the same building and you've got two guys who really want to win, if they don't want to work together it makes everybody's life a little bit more difficult.

"But over the past couple of years that Ryan and Kurt have been running together, they have built a really strong confidence situation as far as (one saying), 'Hey, if I'm in a position to help you, you know I'm going to help you.' And people that paid attention probably saw that quite a few times last year."

Penske has won the Indianapolis 500 14 times and had 12 championships in Indy Car racing. But he moved his open-wheel operations from Pennsylvania to Mooresville, N.C., last year and consolidated his racing empire there.

"We had Penske Racing North and Penske Racing South," he said. "That always bothered me. I wanted to have one Penske Racing. Getting together with Don, we decided we had this opportunity to get this big shop and we could put all the disciplines under one roof.

"We've had a lot of cross-pollenization. We moved crew members from the different disciplines. I think it's made a huge difference. We got one location, one set of people that manage it. We get the benefit, you know, of the experience that we have. To me, I think it was the right move."

Other Indy Car teams compare themselves to the standard set by Penske's team, and Penske would love to match that in NASCAR, where he still hasn't won a championship.

But he has now won a Daytona 500.

"We wouldn't be here if we didn't think we could win, I can tell you that," he said.

"Every year we've been close. I think this year we were confident. A lot of things had come together. We've got a long way to go before we can sit at the table with Rick Hendrick, Joe Gibbs, Jack Roush and those guys, but we're coming close."[[In-content Ad]]

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