Auto racing legend Roger Penske began as a successful sportscar driver before transitioning to owning a race team and opening a car dealership. Within eight years, Team Penske won the Indianapolis 500. Today, the team boasts more than 580 victories, including an unparalleled 18 Indianapolis 500 wins and two at the Daytona 500. Penske's efforts on the track have been intertwined with his business ventures. Penske Corporation, with $32 billion in revenues, includes Penske truck leasing and rentals, retail automotive centers and logistics. In 2019, he bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and related assets, including IndyCar, and led both through the coronavirus pandemic, when racing continued with no fans in the stands. This book chronicles more than 50 years of Roger Penske's racing history, with an overview of his business career, including the turnaround of Detroit Diesel.

The world of Champ Car auto racing had changed. As cars became more sophisticated, the cost of supporting a team had skyrocketed, making things difficult for team owners. In an effort to increase purses paid by racing promoters and win lucrative television contracts, a group of owners formed Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) in 1978. Soon after, CART split from its sanctioning body, the United States Auto Club (USAC). Though champ cars ran on numerous tracks, the Indianapolis 500 was the payday that supported most teams through the season. From the beginning, CART had most of the successful teams and popular drivers, and they focused on driving a wedge between the track owners and the USAC. Over the next 30 years, the tension between CART and USAC ebbed and flowed until all parties realized that reunification was needed for the sake of the sport. This book details the fight over control of Champ Car racing before reunification in 2008.

Among the engineers fueling the rapid rise of the automotive industry at the dawn of the 20th century was James Allison, a Fountain pen maker who joined with Carl G. Fisher in 1904 to found Prest-O-Lite, an early manufacturer of automotive headlights. This biography tracks Allison's involvement in the Indianapolis 500, which he cofounded with Fisher and two others, as well as his machine shop's construction of the Liberty engine, the first mass-produced aircraft engine, and also the V1710, the workhorse of World War II military aircraft. Through his unique ingenuity and perseverance, Allison created a legacy that still resonates today at the Indianapolis 500, Rolls-Royce, and Allison Transmission.

In 1893, Indianapolis carriage maker Charles Black created a rudimentary car - perhaps the first designed and built in America. Within 15 years, Indianapolis was a major automobile industry center rivaling Detroit, and known for quality manufacturing and innovation - the aluminum engine, disc brakes, aerodynamics, super chargers, and the rear view mirror were first developed there. When the Indianapolis Motor Speedway opened in 1909, the hometown manufacturers dominated the track - Marmon, Stutz and Duesenberg. The author covers their histories, along with less well known contributors to the industry, including National, American, Premier, Marion, Cole, Empire, Lafayette, Knight-Lyons and Hassler.

Almost unknown when in 1945 he purchased the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and its famous race, the Indianapolis 500, Tony Hulman soon became a household name in auto racing circles. He is credited with not only saving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - shuttered during World War II - from becoming a residential housing development but also with re-invigorating auto racing in the United States. Until his purchase of the Speedway, Hulman had not been involved in auto racing; he was the CEO of Hulman & Company, a wholesale grocer. An astute businessman, Hulman made Clabber Girl Baking Powder a national brand. With the rise of the chain grocery stores, such as Kroger, the wholesale grocery industry was slowly consolidating. Hulman successfully led the reorientation of the family fortunes to include a range of businesses including a beer company, a Coca-Cola franchise, a broadcast empire and real estate and gas companies. The book traces the rise of Hulman & Company from a small wholesale grocer in Terre Haute to a dominant regional business, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Indianapolis 500 races during Hulman's tenure and his other major investments as well as his philanthropy, particularly to higher education in Terre Haute.