The career of Mark Donohue

This week I’m going to explain why I believe Mark Donohue and the remarkable Can-Am turbo Porsche 917/30K deserve places in Motor Sport’s roll call of racing’s greatest drivers and cars.Mark Donohue and Roger PenskeIt was good to see Donohue featured in the latest issue of the magazine in Guy Allen’s ‘Racing Lives’, but for reasons I find unfathomable both Donohue and the 917/30K were missing from the recent listings of great drivers and cars posted here on the website.Donohue was Penske Racing’s original number one driver and team leader in the team’s formative days from 1966-75. He studied engineering at the Ivy League Brown University and was a very serious, deeply driven man who served as Penske’s team manager, chief engineer and sometimes truck driver and floor sweeper in addition to his duties as a driver.Donohue won three Trans-Am championships between 1968-71 when that series was at its historic height, scored Penske’s first Indy 500 victory in 1972 and won the 1973 Can-Am titl...