Re: POST MIAMI! KESELOWSKI WINS,JOHNSON LOOSES!
8Ballin wrote:Yeah, the 1993 season may have been the best ever with Penske back with Rusty and the MGD car, it seems like when they switched to Miller Lite they were never the same. But the mid 90s is when everything started changing, HMS, Roush and others really started spending big time money and expanding, you would think Roger would have thrived in this environment but for the longest time he tried to be cheap and keep things small with his Nascar deal ("Penske Racing South") as he had a number of other ventures going on. This started the downfall of RCR and Dale Sr. as well as they could not keep up with the money of Hendrick.
Even through the early 2000s Penske was still trying to keep things small with Nascar and I think is a good reason they started to fall so far behind, along with that crap Dodge they had.
Only in recent years Penske woke up, building up a huge shop in Charlotte and moving all their racing teams there, ending his ALMS/Rolex program and ramping up a full-time Nationwide program instead, and they seemed to finally figure out you need a boatload of engineers and full-time people dedicated to Nascar, not that it should be this way, but again HMS forced this issue...
I was fortunate enough in meeting Don Miller President of PRS at the time twice at two of Ryan's Fan Appreciation Days once in 2002 up in Niles,Michigan then in 2003 at Mishawaka,Indiana at a car dealership no less. He was the typical happy go lucky multi-millionaire and very humble. 2003 was the first year I got to meet Ryan's sister Jamie. Jamie was a very pretty girl let me tell you! I have one super rare picture of her from 2003. Ryan would probably kill me if I posted it!
2002 "Rookie Of The Year!".....Winner Of "The Allstar Race" 2002!....Awarded "Driver Of The Year" 2003!......Winner Of The "Daytona 500" 2008!


