Penske Racing - NASCAR - Car No. 12 History

Car No. 12 History

Since 1998, Penske Racing has fielded two separate teams bearing car number 12.

The first #12 team for Penske debuted in 1994 at Michigan as the #07 Ford driven by Robby Gordon and owned by German businessman and former Ford executive Michael Kranefuss along with Newman/Haas Racing co-principal Carl Haas. The car started and finished 38th after Gordon crashed on lap 70. After another start with Geoff Brabham at the Brickyard 400, the team— known as Kranefuss-Haas Racing— went full-time in 1995 with John Andretti driving the Kmart/Little Caesars #37 Ford. Andretti won the pole at the Mountain Dew Southern 500 and finished 18th in the points. The team struggled in 1996 and Kranefuss decided to replace Andretti with Jeremy Mayfield in what amounted to a driver swap between Kranefuss-Haas and Cale Yarborough's team as Andretti replaced Mayfield in Yarborough's #98. The team picked up co-sponsorship from Royal Crown Cola for the following season and improved to be 13th in the points in 1997, but it was obvious the team wouldn't succeed if it only fielded one team. At the end of the season Kranefuss and Haas dissolved the partnership and the Kmart sponsorship moved over to Travis Carter's team, which became Haas-Carter Motorsports.

In 1998, Kranefuss and Penske Racing announced a merger, with Mayfield coming aboard to drive the #12 Mobil 1 Ford Taurus as a teammate to Rusty Wallace. The move turned out to be a success, and Mayfield became the next big star. He won the pole at Texas, and at one point in the season, found himself in the points lead. At the Pocono 500 in June, he won his first Winston Cup series race. Mayfield's breakout year in Winston Cup ended with a 7th place finish in the points. Mayfield struggled in 1999, as he did not win and dropped 4 spots in the points. In 2000, he won the Pocono 500 and California 500. Midway through the season, Kranefuss sold his share of the team to Penske. Mayfield then suffered a concussion while practicing for the Brickyard 400. He missed two races recuperating from his injury and finished 24th in points. In 2001, Mayfield posted seven top-10 finishes, but was fired following the race at Kansas. Rusty Wallace's little brother Mike took over, and came close to winning at Phoenix before settling for second place to Jeff Burton. However, Mobil elected to leave the team at the end of the season and the #12 was shut down.

Penske's current #12 team originally began running in the ARCA Re/Max Series in 2000 as the #27 Ford sponsored by Alltel and driven by Ryan Newman. Later in the year, the team made its Winston Cup debut with Newman at Phoenix, finishing 41st due to engine failure. In 2001, now driving the #02 Alltel Ford, Newman split time between ARCA, the NASCAR Busch Series, and the NASCAR Winston Cup Series. He drove in 15 Busch races and won at Michigan. In the Cup Series, he participated in 7 events, and almost won The Winston Open before his engine expired in the closing laps. He put together two top-five finishes, which included a second place finish at Darlington, and a pole in his abbreviated schedule.

Penske brought the #02 team to full-time competition in 2002, with Alltel sponsoring the newly-renumbered #12. In his rookie year Newman waged a spirited battle with Jimmie Johnson for NASCAR Rookie of the Year honors. Newman won The Winston, and the fall event at New Hampshire, as well as six poles. Although he didn't win as many races as Johnson (one versus Johnson's three) and finished behind him in the points (sixth place, seven points behind fifth-place Johnson), he finished ahead of Johnson to win Winston Cup Rookie of the Year. After the switch to Dodge in 2003, he won 8 races, 11 poles, and finished 6th in points.

In 2004, Newman won twice, earned 9 pole positions, qualified for the inaugural Chase for the Nextel Cup, and finished seventh in points. Newman finished 2005 with 8 pole positions, but only one win. He qualified for the Chase for the Cup for a second year in a row and ended up sixth in the final standings. He failed to win a race and missed the Chase in both 2006 and 2007. However, he found himself back in the winners circle early in 2008, taking victory in the 50th running of the Daytona 500 (the #2 of Kurt Busch finished second) to open the season and to claim Penske's first Daytona 500 win. After the #12 team won the Daytona 500 in 2008, the team had struggled and Ryan Newman announced during the summer that he would leave and drive the #39 Chevy for Stewart Haas Racing.

The #12 car lost its sponsor in 2009 as Cellco Partners, a joint venture of Verizon and Vodafone, closed the deal to purchase Alltel in January 2009, thus voiding the terms of the grandfather clause that allowed the #12 car to run with a sponsor that is a direct competitor to that NASCAR series' sponsor. The team announced that they would move the Wireless sponsorship to the IndyCar Series and the NASCAR Nationwide Series and will rename the team Verizon Championship Racing, a reference to Verizon Wireless' Penske-wide marketing through both its IndyCar and NASCAR sponsorships, complete with its heritage of champions (especially on Vodafone's side, as it is a sponsor of Ferrari's F1 team). Penske hired David Stremme to race the car in a largely unbranded fashion for 2009, but he did not produce results and was fired toward the end of the season. Brad Keselowski, who had recently signed with Penske when he was unable to procure a seat at Hendrick Motorsports, took over the car toward the end of the 2009 season. He then ran the #12 full-time in 2010 with sponsorship from Dodge and AAA.

In 2012, the #12 team returned at the spring Kansas race with Hornish. The team was also meant to run at the October Talladega race before Hornish stepped up to drive the No. 22