Team Penske honored two of their long-serving staff members on Sunday at the annual end-of-year team dinner where not only did the team celebrate Ryan Blaney being crowned 2023 NASCAR Cup Series champion but Josef Newgarden was celebrated for claiming his maiden Indianapolis 500 victory which was the team’s 19th.
The two men inducted this year are Nick Goozee and Jay Signore who are the 14th and 15th inductees. A native of South London, Nick Goozee joined Team Penske in 1974 as a fabricator for the team’s Formula 1 (F1) operation based at Penske Cars in Poole, Dorset, England. In 1983, Goozee rose to the role of Managing Director of the famed facility on the southern coast of England where F1 and INDYCAR winners were constructed from 1974 to 1999 using standards of build that few other manufacturers could match.
Nick Goozee was instrumental in the design, development and build of Penske chassis that would go on to win 14 Indianapolis 500s and nine INDYCAR SERIES championships. This included the winningest chassis in Penske Cars history, the PC-23 that Al Unser Jr., Emerson Fittipaldi and Paul Tracy used to dominate the 1994 INDYCAR season. That year the team won 12 of 16 races – including a historic performance at the Indianapolis 500 with the Mercedes-Benz engine – en route to a 1-2-3 finish in the series standings with Unser taking the crown. The Englishman commented saying:
“It is an honor to accept this award not only for myself but on behalf of the many remarkable members of Penske Cars who over three decades made so much success for Team Penske possible.
Jay Signore first came to the attention of Roger Penske after Signore and Team Penske’s first champion driver, Mark Donohue, competed in Sports Car Club of America races together in the late 1950s. His first role was helping with Penske’s powerboat racing operation in the summer of 1972. Signore and his wife Barbara both joined Team Penske in 1973 and helped manage the team until 1980.
The biggest undertaking for Signore during his time at Team Penske was as President of the International Race of Champions (IROC) from 1974 to 2007, an all-star racing series co-created by Roger Penske. For its existence, IROC featured drivers from NASCAR, INDYCAR, Formula 1, Sports Car and dirt racing competing in identically prepared cars.
Speaking about his induction, Sgmnore said:
“I have to thank everyone at Team Penske that voted me into this exclusive Hall of Fame. “I was able to touch a lot of different areas during my time with Team Penske, with IROC being right at the top. Roger’s vision was to gather the best drivers from sports cars, stock cars and open wheel competition, and pit them against one another on an even playing field. It was a different time because we got all of the top drivers to participate. It was a great chapter in motorsports.”