The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

[Duke W.]

...actually ghost written by Paul Van Valkenberg based on many hours of interviews with Donohue, this is the best book on racing I have ever read. My only regret is that I did not buy it 35 years ago when it came out.

I found a well used copy in the LA County library system and may buy the revised edition that came out in 2000.

Donohue was the team manager, chief engineer, test driver, and number one race driver on multiple car types in any given season with Penske - Trans-Am, Can-Am, Formula A, FIA, Indy car. It's no wonder that he was burned out and retired in early '74 after he won the inaugural IROC series.

What really stood out was how bad most of the cars were when delivered to Penske - McLaren, Lola, Ferrari. Clearly the production cars - Camaro, Javelin, Matador - needed help to be competitive, but you would think that purpose built race cars would be fairly close.

Even the Porsches were screwed up. Donohue had to redesign the front suspension of the 917-10 to provide decent geometry so it would handle.

Also, new to me was that Donohue began racing his own Corvette, a '57 283/245 in 1958 and won his first ever race - a hill climb in New Hampshire.

Unfortunately, by the time he was hired by Penske in 1967, Penske was done with Corvettes.

Duke

[Gary C.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Mark Donohue, IIRC won amateur SCCA championships in 1959 & 60 in Corvettes? Really super smart, nice quiet and very talented Brown University Mechanical Engineer. Gary....

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Unfortunately, no and far off the mark. He never raced a Corvette with SCCA. His first SCCA year, 1960, was in an Elva Courier. Then over the next five years, an Elva Formula Junior, a MGB, a Daimler SP250 of all things - had a few rides in a Cobra, - then won the 1965 B-Production championship in a Shelby GT 350.

His mentor during that period was Walt Hansgen, and Hansgen got him his first semi-pro rides including co-driving a Ferrari 275LM at Sebring.

Duke

[Steven B.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

'Just looked at my pics of Mid Ohio USRRC from '68. I was lucky enough to be walking through the paddock and came upon Penske's hauler and heard something in the cab. There was Mark about three feet away. I was pretty nervous and asked "Mr. Donahue" for an autograph. He said "sure" and asked if I had a piece of paper. I had a class registeration slip in my wallet and gave to him folded. He opened it, smiled, and said "Purdue, good choice". I asked him a few questions as did the guy I was there with. Somehow we got on the topic of prerace jitters and he said he usually got sick and vomited before each race and had done so a few minutes before. That really surprised me. Just then Roger Penske came up in his trademark shirt with capulets and asked Mark if everything was OK. Mark told him he had vomited and now all was OK. I snapped a shot of Penske, Mark handed my the autograph, and we had a short conversation then I walked away with a memory forever. If not for the tire blowout I wonder how he would have done in F1?

Steve

[Gary C.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Mark Donohue raced his personal Corvette when he was going to Brown. Sorry, misspoke about winning Championships - it was a couple of races he won.

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

The only sanctioned race he won in the '57 Corvette was the hillclimb I mentioned in my first post, but he "won" a few other - as we say - "unsanctioned races" that he discussed in the book.

Get the book. It's a great read!

Duke

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

'Just looked at my pics of Mid Ohio USRRC from '68. I was lucky enough to be walking through the paddock and came upon Penske's hauler and heard something in the cab. There was Mark about three feet away. I was pretty nervous and asked "Mr. Donahue" for an autograph. He said "sure" and asked if I had a piece of paper. I had a class registeration slip in my wallet and gave to him folded. He opened it, smiled, and said "Purdue, good choice". I asked him a few questions as did the guy I was there with. Somehow we got on the topic of prerace jitters and he said he usually got sick and vomited before each race and had done so a few minutes before. That really surprised me. Just then Roger Penske came up in his trademark shirt with capulets and asked Mark if everything was OK. Mark told him he had vomited and now all was OK. I snapped a shot of Penske, Mark handed my the autograph, and we had a short conversation then I walked away with a memory forever. If not for the tire blowout I wonder how he would have done in F1?

Steve

Great Story! I probably would have given one of the family jewels in that era to have spent a minute or two talking to either Donohue or McLaren.

But I did have a similar experience in 1978. I was at Riverside for what I recall was the October F5000 and IROC race with the 12-year old neighbor kid in tow. We were walking through the paddock when none other than Mario Andretti (who had just sewed up the World Driving Championship) was walking directly toward us all by himself. So I walk up to him and say something like "I'd just like to shake your hand and congratulate you on your World Driving Championship". We shook hands, then I asked him to autograph our race program, which he did.

I gave the program to Sean who is now in his mid-forties, and he still has the Mario Andretti autographed program.

Duke

[Richard M.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Duke,

Does the book say where in NH? Was it Mount Washington? If so that hill is 6288 feet if I recall.

Rich

[Chris H.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

When I was 9 years old I had the thrill of getting Mark Donahue's autograph at Frank Marratta's Auto Show at the Hartford Armory in the winter of '73, the year after he won the Indy 500.

The autograph disappeared for 30 years after one of my
Mom's cleaning epidodes. To my great joy I found it and promptly put in a display case above Carousel's 1/18th scale die cast of his Indy winning '72 McLaren M16. What a beautiful car in it's Sunoco livery.

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Duke,

Does the book say where in NH? Was it Mount Washington? If so that hill is 6288 feet if I recall.

Rich

It reads: ...a hillclimb at Belmont, New Hampshire. I assume that's the nearest town.

His biggest competition was a Fuel Injection Corvette that he said "..was equipped with every heavy duty option..."

No one is born a driver, but some get the hang of it quickly and some never do. Donohue was clearly in the first group!

Duke

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

I also read a recently published book about Prost vs. Senna. Prost was not an engineer, but he had a real feel for the car and worked closely with the engineers to achieve the best setup.

Senna would show up and the engineers would ask him how he wanted his car set up, and he would say just set it up like Prost's car, then go out and drive ten-tenths even if he had a 30 second lead.

Prost was a lot more like Donohue than Senna. Senna was like... well, Senna... or Villeneuve. Unfortunately, as the book progresses you get the feeling he was an accident waiting to happen.

I think Donohue was the most versatile driver of all time. He had a good natural ability, which was honed by his knowledge of the underlying science, which he understood at an ever lower level of detail as time progressed.

He could take any kind of car, test it, determine its deficiencies, fix the problems whether is was something as simple as springs or a major suspension redesign, then go out and win races and championships.

I'm still mad that we lost him (McLaren, too), but at least we have his book. Those guys were my heros!

Duke

[Bill M.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

But I did have a similar experience in 1978. I was at Riverside for what I recall was the October F5000 and IROC race with the 12-year old neighbor kid in tow. We were walking through the paddock when none other than Mario Andretti (who had just sewed up the World Driving Championship) was walking directly toward us all by himself. So I walk up to him and say something like "I'd just like to shake your hand and congratulate you on your World Driving Championship". We shook hands, then I asked him to autograph our race program, which he did.

I gave the program to Sean who is now in his mid-forties, and he still has the Mario Andretti autographed program.

Duke

Speaking of the great Mario Andretti, here he is on the pole of the Watkins Glen Formula 5000 race in 1974. He is the car closest to the Corvette pace car. I'm standing in the boot, which is at the opposite end of the track from the starting line. We heard the start, and by the time the field got around to the boot on the first lap, Mario was so far ahead that it was funny. He motored on to an easy win.



That week-end, there was also a 6-hour endurance race and this car did very well. Corvette content: I could not believe that a "911" could run right with the Greenwood-style batmobile big-block Corvette race cars, but it did. This is the first tubo-powered 911 racer. The dawn of a new era.



Here's another shot of Mario at the Glen in 1975, his debut year in Formula 1. Corvette content: none, but Mario sure represented our country well in the international racing world.

[Peter G.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

Mark Donohue actually qualified the former Penske L-88 Corvette for George Wintersteen at the 1967 12 Hours of Sebring. That car finished 2nd in GT behind the Sunray DX 1967 L-88 Corvette of Don Yenko and Dave Morgan. Mark, as we know, was driving the then new Camaro for Roger Penske. Penske and Donohue had a tough year in 1967 with the Camaro. Too bad they didn't stick with the L-88 Corvette.

[Duke W.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

1967 was a learning year. The book describes the difficult time they had turning the production Camaro into a good race car within the SCCA rules.

They did their homework and dominated the 1968 season. Donohue won 10 of the 13 races.

1968 was the year that, working with GM engineers at the "Black Lake" at Milford, Donohue really began to understand vehicle dynamics. It was the transistion were science took over from art in the design and tuning of race cars.

Ford came back with cubic yards of money in '69 and took the title, but did not dominate like the Penske team in '68.

Corvettes raced in SCCA A and B-production, which was amateur and got no publicity, so it had little marketing value other than the three FIA races - Daytona, Sebring, and Watkins Glen.

Trans-Am was professional, drew big crowds, and got lots of publicity for the various manufacturers supporting their pony car marketing efforts.

If you want to figure out which way Penske is going to go next - just follow the money!

Duke

[Peter G.]

Re: The Unfair Advantage by Mark Donohue

That's exactly why he switched to AMC in 1970 for the Trans Am Series, future Nascar, and also worked with Porsche in the Can Am series and future IROC (1973) as well.