Article: An Unfair Advantage?

[Steve Holmes]

Round 10 of the Trans-Am championship was notable, for being the first race since the season opener at Daytona which wasn’t won by a Penske Camaro. Titus took victory here, from Posey, and Donohue. Different publications have offered different explanations on why Donohue was off his game. Some say it was because he was ill. Donohue himself wrote, in The Unfair Advantage, it was because he’d used up his brakes. But regardless, he couldn’t challenge Titus. But Posey could. He led much of the race before running out of fuel. After pitting for a top-up, he charged off after Titus once more, moving ahead, until flat-spotting his tires avoiding Rusty Jowett’s gyrating Camaro. Rather than have his car rattle itself to pieces with badly flat-spotted tires, or risk a blow-out, he went screeching into the pits to have new wheels and tires fitted, but in 1968, there were no driver-to-pit radios, and his team were unprepared for his arrival. Frazzled, they eventually fitted new rubber, and he set off again in search of Titus, but the Mustang driver was still in front at the finish.

Roger Penske opted to run just one car for the remaining three races. At Continental Divide, normal service resumed, and Donohue took the win. A rare engine failure ended his Riverside race after 61 of the scheduled 96 laps, but Donohue took a commanding victory in the final at Kent, after battling the early laps with Titus, who’d switched camps to drive a Terry Godsall run Chevy powered Pontiac Firebird. Titus also took the pole, but broke an engine after 43 laps.

For the Penske team, the 1968 Trans-Am had been one of total dominance, winning ten out of thirteen races, and placing second in two others. And they did so against full factory backed teams of Ford Mustangs, and AMC Javelins, as well as several cashed-up independent operations, including that of Canadian Godsall, which, in partnership with Titus, would go on to run the factory Pontiac program in 1969.



Donohue’s main race car, that which first appeared in Round 3 at War Bonnet, won nine of the eleven races it contested. The Penske team blew the doors off the opposition with an impressive display of speed and reliability. Donohue was at one with his machine, spending so much time with it, building, testing, and racing, that he was as intimate with his race car as any driver could possibly be. The Penske operation was the epitome of professionalism and slick organisation. All the hard work was done back at the shop, and in testing. The cars were completely torn down between races, repainted, and reassembled with almost everything replaced or refurbished. While other teams scrambled to perform engine, transmission, or rear-end swaps at the track, the Penske team showed up with their gleaming blue rocket-ships, the crew donning fresh clean uniforms, and then they smoked everyone in qualifying and the race. It looked effortless. Of course, it wasn’t, but that was part of the ploy. The Penske team had the opposition on the ropes before they even rolled their cars off the trailer.

Certainly, Penske’s dominant display in 1968 left their rivals reeling. Auto manufacturers only get involved in the racing game to sell more cars. All their silver-tongued ad-men and catchy slogans have little use if their cars are getting beat-up on every weekend by the competition. Motor racing is marketing, and has a dollar value. Of the 13 Trans-Am races held in 1968, Camaro took 11 wins, Ford 2, and AMC 0. Who do you think got the most marketing mileage out the season? Ironically, General Motors still had their self-imposed ‘no-racing’ policy in place, officially, at least.



Sales of Fords Mustang dropped from 472,000 units in 1967 to 317,000 in 1968. Meanwhile, Camaro sales grew from 221,000 in 1967 to 235,000 in 1968. A good portion of that customer loyalty and growth could be attributed to the familiar sight of Mark Donohue and his gleaming blue racer with the yellow ‘Sunoco Camaro’ lettering emblazoned down its flanks storming to victory, race after race.

The Sunoco Camaro domination in 1968 forced their rivals to greatly improve their performances in 1969, and each of the factory outfits built completely new race cars, including Penske, who stepped up to run a full-time two-car operation. Two new ’69 Camaros were constructed, for Donohue and new Penske signing, Ronnie Bucknum. As part of his arrangement with Roger Penske for 1968, Sam Posey paid for and took possession of one of the ’68 cars. Curiously, rather than the car he himself drove, he instead ended up with Donohue’s car. Posey placed a classified for the Camaro in early 1969, trying to off-load it for $12,000, but failed to find a buyer.

Meanwhile, Penske tore into 1969 with their two new cars, up against four (and sometimes five) factory Mustangs, run by Shelby and Bud Moore, plus factory Firebirds and Javelins. After a slow start, the Penske team were well in control by mid-season, but with so much at stake, so the level of intensity, paranoia, protesting and counter-protesting between rival factory teams quickly escalated. When Goodyear-contracted Donohue employed under-handed tactics to get hold of and evaluate the latest Ford-contracted super-trick Firestone tires, so the animosity rose further, and it was Jim Musser from Chevrolet who strongly urged employing the services of a back-up car, should Ford choose to retaliate, and sacrifice one of their cars to escort Donohue far off into the scenery.