[2][6], Donohue won the SCCA national championship in an Elva Courier in 1961. When Donohue took the Ferrari to Le Mans, the car attained only 205 mph on the straight versus the Porsche 917s 235 mph. Mark contracted polio when he was 6, but he fully recovered. Hangsen was killed testing a car for the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans. My friends began warning me., Racing was becoming an obsession, but in 1965, he realized: Maybe I can make a living out of something like to do. Donohue finished fourth at Daytona and won the Trans-Am class at the 12 Hours of Sebring. I could see myself helping to develop the Formula One car, setting it up and then having some younger hotshot driver take over. But Donohue knew that time was running short and his skills and reflexes weren't getting any better. They won the race, finished third overall, and went on to win 10 out of 13 races that year. Mark Donohue: Returns to Die - The New York Times Secrets of the mysterious 1975-77 Camaro Racemark GT Donohue was the driver of Penskes first Brickyard effort in 1969. - Remembering Mark Donohue - FormulaSpy However, the Penske Formula One car proved unsound and Donohue's best finish this year was a fifth place. Going racing meant anywhere and everywhere, and the two chose to tackle stock cars. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. And when he thought he had done enough, he quit. I could see what was coming, he said. In 2003, in commemoration of Penske Racing's 50th NASCAR win, Nextel Cup driver Ryan Newman drove a Dodge Intrepid painted to resemble Donohue's 1973 AMC (with a No. The key factors behind F1s Premier League-style managerial revolving door, The tangible steps Alpine has taken to meeting its humble F1 2023 targets, The tangible steps Alpine has taken to meeting its humble F1 2023 targets Donohue went on to win 10 of 13 races, a Trans-Am series record which would stand until Tommy Kendall went 11 for 13 in the 1997 Trans-Am championship, winning the first 11 races that year in his All-Sport liveried Mustang. Its made me realize its an honor to be his son. It became official last September. Riverside was over 2.6 miles long and the duration of the race 500 miles meant this particular event was more of an endurance contest. A visit to the gravesite on a gray, cold, foggy March day revelaved little toy race cars on the gravestone, along with a plastic checkered flag -- a testament the life of Mark Donohue. (He was operated on at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta by Drs. Donohue, 38, Dead Of Racing Injuries - The New York Times They also acid-dipped the body on the Camaro and had to caution people not to lean against it, for fear it would dent. Password He was so key in the operation when he was there its something we had to rebuild. Today, he works for Porsche Cars North America as client relationship manager. [17] That race was Penske's first NASCAR win in a long history of NASCAR participation. August 19th marks twenty-five years ago that Mark Donohue passed away from brain trauma, which was caused from an accident while practicing for a Formula 1 event. [2], Donohue was invited back to Le Mans by Ford in 1967. REWIND: Miller on Mark Donohue | RACER - RACER | Racing News The track chosen for the speed record attempt was the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Mark returned [a year later] because he realized he wasnt good at anything else. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. But where other youngsters were souping up cars to impress girls, I was only interested in the mechanics, Donohue said. Her . When Penske decided late to enter Formula One full time, Donohue had a difficult decision to make. racing was concerned, he had done it all. Donohue disagreed. . To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. 4445. Coming out of turn seven at about 150mph (240km/h), the rear bodywork flew off the car, which became extremely unstable, lifted off the ground, and tumbled down the track. The Penske grand prix car proved a disappointment and Donohue's best finish this season was a fifth place in the British Grand Prix. This remains the last time a ringer captured a win in a Cup Series road course race, but the victory took on a far greater meaning in hindsight. I think I was the first guy to assert that Mark was a better driver than an engineer, says Bedard. He was one of the best American roadracers in history, but his biggest triumph was on the oval at Indianapolis, where in 1972 he won the 500. He knew, maybe all along, that he would come back. Mark Donohue. That long association resulted in the ultimate triumph for an American driver in 1972, when he won the Indianapolis 500. The No. Bahrain GP: F1 technical images direct from the pitlane, What we learned from Friday practice at F1's 2023 Bahrain GP, What we learned from Friday practice at F1's 2023 Bahrain GP Mark Donohue & Manfred Schaller's Fatal Crash @ sterreichring 1975 The driver of the Honda was killed. He won Indy and we juiced him up and he was out there giving a speech and he was so funny that his sense of humor came out and everybody loved it. From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. He said, Just follow me. Following Mark Donohue on a two-lane road with no street lights was an exercise. As ADAM COOPER recalls, though, it ended in tragedy. A Pennsylvania native by the name of Mark Donohue, the reigning Indianapolis 500 winner, pedaled a red-white-and-blue AMC Matador to his only Cup Series victory in six career starts. Penske's new Penske Racing complex in Mooresville, North Carolina is decorated with various murals of Donohue and his racing cars, most notably the AMC stock car and the various Porsche prototypes that Donohue drove through his career. His average speed around the 2.66-mile (4.28km) high-banked oval was 221.120mph (355.858km/h). Donohue dominated the 1967 race, driving a Lola T70 MkIII Chevrolet for Penske. Cresser v CDTS, 1 (2015 NY Slip Op 03227) On the phone, the editor said, You gotta come back in. Ferraris chief engineer Mauro Forghieri glared at it and said, Theyll never let you run that wing at Le Mans. Mark replied, Well, I wouldnt want to run this wing at Le Mans, would I?, Partly because we were both engineers, Mark and I hit it off, recalls Patrick Bedard. Thank you. It served as the first NASCAR victory for aspiring team owner Roger Penske, a proverbial snowball sent rolling down a path thatd alter the entire American auto racing landscape. I know their first conversation after the race, he didnt say (that he had won). Donohue qualified his Penske midway the grid, and took it to the morning warm-up session before the start of the race. U.S., Newspapers.com Obituary Index, 1800s-current. Their performance on the track also quickly turned heads. He won three times in IndyCar competition and won the 1973 NASCAR Cup Series race at Riverside Raceway in Riverside, California, driving an AMC Matador. [citation needed] Hansgen arranged for Donohue to become his teammate in 1965, co-driving a Ferrari 275 at the 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race,[2] which they finished in 11th place. Mark Donohue was killed during a practice session for the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix. I got to know Mark and hired him to run our Can-Am car. Stay close to the outside curbing, brake hard, and turn in . Neither Donohue or Penske forgot that remark, even after Donohue drove an astounding race and finished third. "They posted me to the infield, taking care of people who got too much sun or had too much to drink," Olvey said. August 19, 1975 in Graz, Styria, Austria (car accident) Birth Name: Mark Neary Donohue Jr. Mini Bio (1) Mark Donohue was born on March 18, 1937 in Haddon Township, New Jersey, USA. The Unfair Advantage, at Indy - Mark Donohue's 1970 Lola T-153 As Roger Penske said, Mark wasnt flashy, but he put the numbers on the board.. Its something that Ive looked at since I was really young as a kid, Donohue said. It is strangely rewarding in a way I never thought racing would be for me, personally. Among the most impressive cars in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum is the beautiful blue and yellow No. . Stroll was "protecting" injured wrist during Bahrain GP practice, Alonso "not thinking" about Bahrain pole despite topping Friday times, Alonso "not thinking" about Bahrain pole despite topping Friday times He sustained a fatal head injury from the crash. Portrait of American racing driver Mark Donohue as he poses with his car after winning the Indianapolis 500 race, Speedway, Indiana, May 1972. . A friend once described riding in Donohue's Porsche 911 as a 'Wall of Death thing most of the time. Strange and smart, but very driven., The drive set Mark Donohue apart and made him the winningest driver in Team Penske history. He died on August 19, 1975 in Graz, Styria, Austria. The doctors in Graz, Austria, said yesterday that the racing driver would have been crippled for life had he survived. Donohue, equipped with a mechanical-engineering degree from Brown University, approached car setup not with pet theories or traditional wisdom but with a slide rule, an overarching grasp of how physics strives to thwart a race cars mission, and 300 push-ups daily. The 917/30 generally is considered one of the most powerful and most dominant racing machines ever created. During their enormous success in Trans-Am, Penske and Donohue would begin to experiment with their Camaros. We started with a Lola 4-wheel drive, and in 1971 we got a McLaren. Not that Donohues career or his one win in NASCAR needed validation, but IROC has long crystallized what fans thought of the talent in drivers who never outwardly succeeded in the Cup Series. I think the people at Indy thought we were the college guys with the crew haircuts and the polished wheels. Driver who fled fatal Olney crash gets 20-year sentence Toy cars at the gravesite of Mark Donohue in Summit, New Jersey. He won many races for us and the first IROC championship with the Porsche. Mark Donohue's Fatal Crash - sterreichring 1975 (42 years ago) Humphrey The Auto Racing Fan 1989 2.38K subscribers Subscribe 54 Save 13K views 5 years ago Notice Age-restricted video. In all, he won 57 major races and more than $1million. Once, Penske rented a Formula One car for Donohue and in 1971, in his first start in one of these singleseat, opencockpit racing cars, he finished third in the Canadian Grand Prix. Mark told me, Sometimes you just have to get it done., That was my take, too, says Michael Argetsinger, who has just written a riveting biography called Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (David Bull Publishing, $39.95). Between 1971 and 1972, Penske Racing (along with Donohue as the primary test and development driver) was commissioned by Porsche to help develop the 917-10 to compete in the Can-Am series. 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A fire at the Sunoco refinery near the airport dominated the front pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer, but the sports section belonged to Mark Donohue, a racecar driver who had blown a tire during a practice run before the Austrian Grand Prix and died from complications related to the accident two days later, August 19, 1975. this email address already registerd with us. Penske and Donohue did not stop acid-dipping after this, however. How famous was Mark . Donohue, too, recognized the accomplishment as something of a walk-off home run for his career, briefly retiring following his IROC championship before returning later that year with Penske to compete in the final two Formula 1 races. I realized then that if I wanted to do better in this business I had to spend more time on my car, he said. It is core to the myth of Mark that he was just an okay driver but a genius engineer. He could drive a car in the 24-hour race at Daytona, a Trans-Am Car, an Indy car and a NASCAR car. It was at Hangsens funeral that Roger Penske approached Donohue to drive for him. I dont remember him changing a bit.. He tried to be a team manager; that didnt work. I'd always thought that I'm not as good a driver as I am capable of figuring out how to make the car the quickest, he once said. He was very quiet, very unassuming, Mario Andretti told Autoweek. But if his father, Mark Sr., a successful patent lawyer, never envisaged a racing career for his son, neither cid young Mark. He tinkered his way all through Pingry School, Brown University and a job as a mechanical engineer with the Pulverizing Machinery Corporation in Summit. Its a goal he had and a goal he checked off. Donohue was about to have his race victory taken away for cheating, but Roger Penske stepped in. In fact, Mark often wasnt the engineer at all. In all, there were 57 major victories and more than $1million in purses for this pleasant, intelligent man who gave up a career in mechanical engineering because racing is what he wanted to do. Complete Canadian-American Challenge Cup results, Inskip Family History & Competition Engineering staff. On January 21, 1973, the NASCAR Cup Series opened its season with a road course race at Riverside International Raceway in California. David Donohue drives his dad's 1972 Indy 500-winning car at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2016. Mark Donohue SCCA national champion early in a career Donohue was born in New Jersey on March 18, 1937, and became involved in racing as a senior at college. The supposition is that a support post from one of the advertising signs caught Donohue's helmet. Both Olvey and Trammell got their start in trackside medical response in similar fashion: Answering a bulletin board call for med students to help out at the Indianapolis 500 - Olvey in about 1969, Trammell in 1972. So they fiddled with it in non-meaningful ways, then Mark went back out. He gained 11.5 secondsthe quickest Ferrari in the field and fourth overall. Mark Donohue began racing at the age of 22 in a 1957 Chevrolet Corvette . They sent the legal weight car through the technical inspection with the number 15 and again with the number 16 on it. Some day, they promised each other, Donohue would try to become the first American since Phil Hill in 1961 to win the world driving chmpionship. Mark Donohue - Wikipedia The only engineering Donohue went back to concerned race cars. Donohue recently had arrived in Austria for the Austrian Grand Prix at the sterreichring race track following the successful closed-course speed record attempt at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama just a few days earlier. Donohue was able to muster fifth-place finishes at the Swedish Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix, but the new Penske PC1 chassis proved problematic, as evidenced by three retirements in the first six races. Foyt and Emerson Fittipaldi, among others tangible proof that, stock-car equipment being even, Donohue was a world beater. Mark Donohue Fatal Crash (Alternate Footage) - video Dailymotion I used to hate riding with him to the airport, said Don Cox, a former chief engineer at Penske Racing when Donohue was with the team. It was August 9, 1975. One night I was in Philadelphia and was following Mark to the old shop in Newtown Square. Why F1's nearly man is refreshed and ready for his return, IndyCar St. Petersburg: Dixon leads Herta in incident-packed opening practice, IndyCar St. Petersburg: Dixon leads Herta in incident-packed opening practice Donohue finished in 12th place at the Canadian Grand Prix, but failed to finish at the United States Grand Prix. Watts.) Coffay fled the scene. He would greet those who didnt know him with a smile, but he was so focused and obsessed with making the race car go fast, he was distant. We may earn money from the links on this page. It meant immediate surgery. He just decided it was time to get out, and he wanted to do the Formula 1 program, Penske said. Acid-dipping car bodies was prevalent with competing Trans-Am teams also. Donohues father was a patent attorney. It was an iconic car, iconic colors for the day and it really brings back memories. ), (key) (Races in bold indicate pole position) (Races in italics indicate fastest lap). His body will be flown to the United States tomorrow and the funeral will take place Monday in Summit, N. J., where Donohue grew up and first got caught up in the hotrod phenomenon. A Mass of the Resurrection will be celebrated at 1 P.M. in St. Teresa's Church. He finds the same things funny. I imagine it must feel like watching another man in bed with your wife. Anyone can read what you share. Hed drive the truck, hed drive the race car, he would work on the car. Revson's death made it almost inevitable that Donohue would come out of retirement. It is there at Saint Teresa Cemetery and Mausoleum that Donohue is buried alongside his mother and father. Hansgen died while testing the GT40 in preparation for Le Mans so Donohue partnered with Australian Paul Hawkins. J. Funk and J. L. Once, in 1971, he and Penske showed up at the Canadian Grand Prix and Jackie Stewart, the former world champion, kidded them: Welcome to the major leagues.. Upstairs was a small room with a bed that had an outside private entrance. Mark Donohue (1937-1975) - Find a Grave Memorial Mark Donohue - Human Side of Racing Mark Donohue profile on SnapLap You never saw him in an argument with anybody. He joined Roger Penske, a former sports car rival who had set up his own team, the following year as a fulltime professional. Late in 1973, when Penske decided to build a Formula One car for the 1975 season, Donohue knew what would happen. Instead, the Racemark GT had Bedard, also a racer, showering praise. Please try again. To be sure, it seems what we now know as The Penske Way gained steam with Donohue as its pied piper. In the 1971 Indianapolis 500, Donohue started second and led 52 of the first 66 laps before breaking a gearbox. Donohues dad was often racing in the United States or Canada for a fledgling operation called Penske Racing. The Penske team leader, Heinz Hofer, said Donohue had told him after the crash that the left front tire had been punctured as he was traveling about 160 m.p.h. That day at Indy, Bobby Unsers Eagle dominated the contest before Unser dropped out. We had a polished yellow tile floor in our garage in Gasoline Alley and took everything out at night and cleaned the floor. They were just forging ahead, David Donohue recalled. The tangible steps Alpine has taken to meeting its humble F1 2023 targets, Why "grounded" Hamilton remains confident in Mercedes' F1 recovery, Why "grounded" Hamilton remains confident in Mercedes' F1 recovery You can go away and the void that you leave gets filled quickly, but when you come back, you are greeted with open arms. He thinks the same way. 8W - Who? - Mark Donohue - Autosport His retirement was short-lived, however, as he was lured back to full-time competitive driving by Penske when he formed a Formula One team, Penske Cars Ltd, to compete in the final two events of the 1974 Formula One World Championship, and to continue competing in 1975 with the new Penske PC1. His fathers absence from the family took its toll, and eventually the marriage dissolved into divorce. Penske's first race shop in Newtown Square, Pa. All of these tiny little stories you get to put all of these puzzle pieces together and get a much better picture of my father. Mark Donohue and Roger Penske during a break in the Indy-car action at Michigan International Speedway n 1974. Event the win at the 1972 Indianapolis 500 created more sleepless nights, because the win did not come on his own terms. He was young Roger Penskes equal. Racing was Donohues obsession. Donohue paced himself that day and took the lead for the first time with 12 laps to go. The bungalow is where team manager Chuck Cantwell and the teams public relations director Dan Luginbuhl worked along with secretary Maryann ODonnell. At the Austrian Grand Prix, Donohue's career, along with Roger Penske's Formula One aspirations, took a tragic turn. What can be better in life, a better ideal?, In 1966, Penske told him: Try it for a year, you're still a young man, and if it doesn't work out you can always go back to engineering.. He had one religion: testing. The singleseat, opencockpit Formula One cars used in grand prix racing have been called torpedoes. During a post-race inspection, race stewards discovered that the car was 250 pounds lighter than the 2,800-pound minimum weight requirement. David followed his father into sports car racing for Porsche. Or, signing some autographs. The original Penske Racing team included Penske, Donohue, chief mechanic and crew chief Karl Kainhofer. In 1970 new Javelin team owner Roger Penske and driver Mark Donohue would breathe new life into the AMC team. He also gave us our first NASCAR win. And given enough time just one more year, maybe he wouldve become Americas first world champion.. John Phillips: For Mark Donohue, 1100 hp was 'Far From Too Much' There, he was Godthat was his way of distinguishing himself. His divine touch extended to his street cars; a friend once described riding in Donohues Porsche 911 as a Wall of Death thing most of the time., The relentless pursuit of perfection eventually took its toll. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/08/20/archives/donohue-38-dead-of-racing-injuries-mark-donohue-is-dead-of-racing.html. Mark wasnt an emotional guy. Appeal from that part of an order of the Supreme Court (Platkin, J. Oops! . It became official last September. The real engineers were Don Cox [from GM] and Helmut Flegl [from Porsche]. It was largely Flegl who created the Porsche 917-30, whose 1100 horsepower, the SCCA bitched, was killing the Can-Am series. Our car experts choose every product we feature. The only person to beat Donohue was his former Penske Trans-Am teammate, George Follmer. That is where Mark Donohue often slept when he worked his way to near exhaustion at the race shop. During testing at Road Atlanta, Donohue recommended larger brake ducts, believing that more cooling would slow the brakes' degradation during a race. Drs. Stephen Olvey and Terry Trammell in Motorsports Hall of Fame of An investigation determined tire failure caused Donohue's fatal crash, and the family won a $12 million settlement. He wanted to know how we were doing. His instant F1 success led to no further involvement in the category, Mark instead concentrating on his blossoming Indy career, winning the big one in 1972. . A full season of racing for the 1975 Formula One season was planned. Back then it was tape-delayed, and she was watching the race on TV. When police found him about three hours later, his . Continuing the practice of reducing weight allowed them to place weights of certain sizes strategically in specific locations within the car, thus helping to balance the car while being driven on the limit.
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