One of the primary forces in the success of Penske Racing, Earle Macmullan, has died at the age of 82. He joined the team in 1969, working on the championship-winning Trans-Am program, for which he became crew chief when Roger switched from Camaros to Javelins (above).<\/p>\n
He also oversaw Mark Donohue\u2019s successful attempt to set a new closed-course world speed record at Talladega with the Porsche 917\/30, and subsequently became the team\u2019s transmission specialist, building gearboxes for the Can-Am and Indycar programs until his retirement in 1998.<\/p>\n
One of his greatest achievements in that role was building the gearbox to handle the immense torque of the pushrod Mercedes-Benz \u201cBeast\u201d engine powering the Penske PC23 that won at Indianapolis in 1994 in Al Unser Jr.\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n
Macmullan is survived by: his wife of 28 years, Jean, daughters Deborah, Donna, Dawn and son David; two stepchildren, Judy and Dennis; sister Joan Day; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. To them and all his many friends in the sport, Vintage Racecar <\/em>extends its deepest sympathies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the primary forces in the success of Penske Racing, Earle Macmullan, has died at the age of 82. He joined the team in 1969, working on the championship-winning Trans-Am program, for which he became crew chief when Roger switched from Camaros to Javelins (above). He also oversaw Mark Donohue\u2019s successful attempt to set a new closed-course world speed record at Talladega with the Porsche 917\/30, and subsequently became the team\u2019s transmission specialist, building gearboxes for the Can-Am and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":713817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,18114,18330],"tags":[17152,11665,18435,18107,16791],"class_list":["post-494459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-car-culture","category-people","category-profiles-car-culture","tag-car-culture","tag-penske","tag-people","tag-people-profiles","tag-profiles"],"yoast_head":"\n