Podcast Ep. 83: IndyCar Engineers, Purdue Alums Talk Team Penske Legacy and Indy 500

Kate Young:

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking, who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boiler makers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni, taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same.

Matt Kuebel:

To be on a team that has a chance to win Indy 500. It makes me feel really good to have that opportunity. I definitely wouldn’t have got here if I wouldn’t have chosen to go to Purdue.

Mike Koenigs:

Purdue tends to foster an environment of continually learning and curiosity, and I think from a racing standpoint, that’s actually more important a lot than sometimes just the technical part. You can tell the difference between a Purdue engineering grad and other schools.

Kate Young:

It’s that time of year again, boilermakers. Welcome to May. Let’s kick this episode off a bit differently. Let’s start with a quick game of trivia. Do you know which IndyCar team has the most in Indianapolis 500 wins? Okay, time’s up. The answer is Team Penske. Did you get it right?

Team Penske is one of the most successful teams in the history of professional sports. Now, in its 57th season. In 2023, the team has earned 18 Indy 500 victories. In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re celebrating the month of May with Matt Gimbel and Mike Koenigs, Team Penske IndyCar Engineers, and Purdue University alums.

Matt, who graduated in May 2022 with his mechanical engineering degree. And Mike, an aeronautical and astronautical engineering alum who graduated in 2003, discussed their Purdue College of Engineering journeys and what it’s like working for one of the most well-known legendary teams in motorsports. These two boiler makers work on all three Team Penske IndyCar entries that will be racing in the 2023 Indianapolis 500 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Those three drivers are Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin.

You’ll hear more about the persistent grit and attention to detail required to be part of a winning Indy 500 team and how their Purdue education set them up for success in the professional motorsports world. We’ll kick this episode off with the most recent Purdue graduate of the two. Matt tells us how he first found out about Purdue University.

Matt Kuebel:

So, I’m from the southeastern part of the state down by Ohio and Kentucky. I could go 20 minutes and be in Ohio or 20 minutes of being Kentucky. Growing up, you always hear about Purdue, but the first person that really sticks with me about Purdue is my sixth grade math teacher, and my sixth grade English and reading teacher was an IU guy, so they were always button heads about Purdue IU rivalry, but he had all the memorabilia and wore Purdue gear and it was always talking about sports games or whatever. So, that’s kind of where I first started to really learn about Purdue.

I knew I wanted to do something with cars growing up, and I was taking some dual credit engineering courses through local community college during my high school, and I was also pretty good at math, so engineering kept popping into the picture when talking about what I want to do. That was the logical choice. And then, I was looking at engineering schools and my sister at that time was also attending Purdue. She graduated with a chemical engineering degree.

So, I had some background about the school. But once I started telling people that I was interested in engineering, Purdue just kept coming up, kept coming up, kept coming up, and I just had always heard about it. So, it was always in the back of my mind. But then, once I started looking at options, it just became the best option logistically for me being an in-state student, its connections in the industry. And then, also just the vast opportunities within Purdue.

I don’t think I really understood all the opportunities and the resources that were available until I actually got there, and I was just surprised my first year, just pretty overwhelmed, but excited that I had all those opportunities ahead of me. So…

Kate Young:

Matt, who has worked for Team Penske for about a year now as a design engineer, grew up a race fan. But he wasn’t actually an avid IndyCar fan. He was much more into NASCAR.

Matt Kuebel:

My parents were season ticket, well annual ticket holders to the Brickyard 400. So, we always grew up watching NASCAR. And Jeff Gordon was my idol at that time. I did a paper and a presentation on him in fourth grade, but he was always my favorite.

So, I grew up watching NASCAR. There was a local dirt track nearby. We went and watched sprint cars there and modified cars and whatnot, and just the roar of the engine going by, the smell of the feel, just seeing people getting after it and just the atmosphere of being at that local dirt track. It had me hooked. And my dad was also a mechanic, so I was always around cars. I just grew up around it. And then, yeah, here we are.

Kate Young:

And here he is, working within the professional motorsports world as an engineer. But at what point did Matt know his passion for racing could intertwine with a full-time career?

Matt Kuebel:

My second to last year, I was one of the drivetrain leads on the Baja SAE team. We ended up doing very well that year that was coming out of COVID, so that was spring 2021. We had designed a whole car again from scratch and converted a four-wheel drive, which was just a massive undertaking, especially with the restrictions due to COVID.

But that competitive spirit got a little flown a little more. I really began to connect with racing and really got super interested in it. And then, over that summer, I just started looking at jobs. I was like, “Why couldn’t I get into this?” I would hear about my friends’ getting jobs at Tesla or SpaceX, or some of those cool companies. But I wanted to do race cars, so I was like, “If they’re getting these cool jobs, why can’t I just go a little different industry?”

So, then I started looking, and then started talking and you just start to hear stories about how people did get there and what their background was. And mine just wasn’t too far off. So, I took that last year at school where I was the president of the Baja SAE team, and just really milked that experience, got as much as I could out of it to try to prepare myself for interviews that following summer because I knew if I was going to get a job in Motorsport, it was going to be after I graduated, after I had that experience.

Kate Young:

For all of our This Is Purdue listeners out there, you may remember our SAE or Society of Automotive Engineers episode from August 2022, when the podcast team went behind the scenes to check out the Purdue students live unveiling of their custom-built race cars. Matt was there, he was a senior then. I definitely recognized him from that day. He shares more about his SAE experience at Purdue.

Matt Kuebel:

Baja SAE is like an off-road go-kart on steroids, but not fully a side by side. So, it’s a little different in that aspect. But the principles of the competition are very similar. So, there’s each year the team’s design, build and compete a race car from scratch. So, they’re designing the whole thing, manufacturing the whole thing, mostly on campus, and then testing and competing it that summer against international teams, and a lot of US. Mostly, US teams, but there are international teams.

And so, the three main categories of that competition are their static, dynamic and an endurance event. So, for us on Baja, our static events where we presented on the design of the car, why we made the choices that we did. We presented the cost of the car, just how much it cost to make. And then, there was a business presentation where they give you a scenario and they tell you to market or sell the car in a certain type of scenario that changes from year to year. And then, there’s dynamic events.

So, acceleration, a sled pill or a hill climb, maneuverability, small turns. And then, there’s a suspension and traction or rock crawl event, which is where Baja becomes really cool and really fun. Seeing some of those cars go through those courses, you would be… People are absolutely stunned at the capabilities of those cars. There’s usually a lot of carnage there too. So, things break, cars roll, it’s a really fun time.

And then, that all leads up to the endurance race. And where Baja’s different than the other teams is we have a four-hour endurance race that is wheel-to-wheel with all the other teams that passed tech inspections. So, the other teams don’t do wheel-to-wheel probably because they go a little quicker, but we go wheel-to-wheel, so it gets pretty gritty. But the chorus is also just mayhem. There’s carnage everywhere, people losing wheels, people rolling. But the whole goal is to just survive. And the team that makes the most amount of laps in that four hours ends up winning.

Kate Young:

Remember, if you want more details on SAE, head over to purdue.edu/podcast to check out that episode. Okay, so you can probably tell Matt is incredibly passionate about his time within this Baja SAE team. In fact, he was so passionate about it that…

Matt Kuebel:

Yes, I did skip commencement to go to the competition. And no, I absolutely do not regret it at all. It’s a known thing within the SAE student world that there is a chance that your commencement lines up with a competition. And it’s always a, “Well, am I going to really skip commencement to go to this competition?” Coming into that last year when I was the president of the team and I knew I was going to have put in a serious amount of time and effort into that year.

I began prepping my parents pretty early before we knew the competition dates. I was like, “You know, that I’m president of this team, there’s a chance that commencement comes at the same date as a competition and I’m going to have to skip graduation.” I’m doing it semi jokingly and it’s mainly my mom. My dad was like, “All right, yeah, whatever.” But my mom’s like, “Ha, ha, ha, that’s so funny, Matthew.”

And then, the dates come out and the Tennessee Tech competition last year lines up with commencement and I’m like, “Oh, boy, here we go.” And I just like, I’m still joking about it. I’m like, “Look, it did match up.” And then, about January or February, my mom calls me or I’m talking with my mom on a visit home and she’s like, “You’re actually serious about skipping graduation for this, aren’t you?” And I’m like, “Yes, mom.” “Well, we better get an invite then.” And I said, “Absolutely, you can come.”

And so, we got cap and gown. My mom and dad came, my brother and sister and their spouses came down. And being from Southern Indiana, it was in the middle of Tennessee, so it wasn’t even a very far drive. So, they made a little weekend trip come out. They came down and they were so stoked. They were like, “I can totally understand why you talk about this all the time.” They’re like, “This is so cool.”

It helped that we had probably the best-looking car there, and we did very well, and I’m very proud of everything that we accomplished together. My parents enjoyed it so much that they came to Rochester, New York for our second competition.

Kate Young:

But there was a slight catch.

Matt Kuebel:

Honestly, one of the biggest bummers about it was I got picked to be the school of Emmy’s banner bearer for commencement. I got the email a month before, they’re like, “Hey, you’ve been chosen to go to… You be the school of Mechanical Engineering’s banner bearer for commencement and meet here to figure out the details.” And I was like, “Oh, I’m not going.”

Kate Young:

Your Mom would’ve been so proud.

Matt Kuebel:

I don’t even know if I told her yet, to be honest. But yeah, I was like, “I’m not going to be there.” So, somebody else got to do it. But while everybody was walking across the stage, I was driving into the endurance race, which definitely worth it.

Kate Young:

Sounds like your family had a fun weekend out of it too, at least. Okay, okay. So, back to IndyCar. How did the SAE program team add up for success when it comes to working for a legendary motorsports team like Team Penske?

Matt Kuebel:

The main thing that directly translate is that, the timelines are so condensed. There’s a saying that says, well, there’s two sayings, “To finish first, first you must finish. And then, race starts at noon on Sunday. If you’re not ready, the race still starts at noon on Sunday.” And so, you have to be prepared. You have to be totally ready, totally organized, and everything has to be ready to go.

And so, the deadlines are tight and your results are very obvious, either you win the race or you do well or you don’t. And I really enjoy that black and white obviousness and the hard fast deadlines. There’s no moving the race dates. They are what they are. So, if you have things for a certain race, they have to be completed on time. And this is where the SAE experience is really invaluable because you’re designing a whole car from scratch, you’re going through the whole engineering design process, and you have to make all these parts and it takes a lot of time.

So, you have to structure your time and you have to be full throttle throughout the whole year, the whole school year. So, nine months, nine or more months of just fully, completely planned out, having that focus and having that, being able to find your path of where you are and where you want to go, that directly translates. And so, that’s been super helpful to have here.

Kate Young:

And what about Matt’s College of Engineering experience?

Matt Kuebel:

The thing that Purdue’s engineering program does well, I think this is across the board of all the engineering degrees, is they really teach you well how to solve problems. And so, the details of how those problems are solved are, I think are far less important than how you actually can solve the problems. So, they really ingrain break down what you have, what you don’t have, what you’re trying to find, and then how do you get there.

And having that process is just extremely invaluable, and it takes a while to ingrain in you, but then they do very well with also exposing you to everything that you could possibly run into. So, you have at least a little bit of exposure, or a little bit of comfort knowing that I’ve been here, I’ve seen this, or I know a little bit about this and I know where I can start.

Kate Young:

Okay, Matt’s answer there sounded really familiar to me.

Angela Ashmore:

I mean, the biggest thing I learned in school was how to think, how to problem solve, because that’s what I do day in and day out is, I get presented with new problems every day and stuff that I am not an expert in, that I don’t really have any knowledge on. And I have to figure out, given fine solve, what do I know about the problem? What am I trying to figure out? And how am I going to get there? And that was what my engineering degree gave me was that problem solving technique.

Kate Young:

That’s our friend of the podcast, Angela Ashmore. She’s an IndyCar race engineer for Chip Ganassi Racings Marcus Ericsson. And if you don’t remember from last year, Angela made history as the first woman IndyCar crew member to win the Indy 500. You can check out her This Is Purdue episode at purdue.edu/podcast or on your favorite podcast app.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, Matt works for all three Team Penske IndyCar drivers, Josef Newgarden, Will Power, and Scott McLaughlin. So, what exactly does an IndyCar design engineer do for these cars? Matt walks us through it.

Matt Kuebel:

As the design engineers, we are like the home base of, we work on full car development. And so, we try to take the whole team forward. And then, there are separate group of people that will work individually on cars. My main role is to design or draw up parts in CAD software, so computer-aided design software. And these parts are anything that anybody needs.

So, mechanics, race engineers, performance engineers, things of that sort, development projects, literally anything and everything. And so, I take the quest of whoever needs something. I talk about what they want, what they envision for how they plan to have it. So, it also could be just a problem like, “Hey, we have this problem, figure it out.” And then, I’ll whip up a solution or I’ll dry out the part, and then make manufacturing drawings and work with some machinists to make sure that we can actually make this thing. And then, have it made and put it together and make sure it works and check back and iterate if necessary.

So, sometimes, if it’s something quick, I can make it myself here, which I really enjoy. You can’t do that everywhere. But here, the whole mission of the team is we’re a team. You’re not stepping on anybody’s toes. We’re all here just trying to make the cars go faster and win races. And so, it’s a very inclusive environment and whatever it takes to get it done, stored mentality, which I really, really enjoy.

We could be working on a development part one day. We could be working on a shop tool the next, or maybe some pit lane equipment. A lot of the stuff that you see, the tire changers or the mechanics using in pit lane, we’re probably designed by somebody like me. So, there’s a few of us that are just whipping up parts and drawing things that need made. So, yeah, there’s a good team of us.

Kate Young:

I asked Matt about his journey from graduating from Purdue to securing a job at Team Penske.

Matt Kuebel:

If you would’ve told me a year ago today, as of recording this, that I’d be here, I would’ve laughed for one, I would’ve been like, “No way, no shot.” But my journey goes, our academic advisor, Todd Nelson, he knew or he knows somebody that’s on the NASCAR side here. And so, he was at the FSAE, the Formula SAE competition in May up in Michigan. And he saw the guy that worked here, they started talking, and say there was some open positions here, and he put my name in.

And then, we got each other’s contact information, had a phone call about my experiences prior to that time and where I was hoping to go, and what kind of environment I was hoping to be in. And then, he gave my resume and contact information to the IndyCar guys, and they reached out, scheduled some interviews, and then went through the onboarding process. And a few weeks later, they flew me down to check out the place. And it was more just like a, “This is what you’re going to get into, is this what you expect?”

Kate Young:

Are you ready?

Matt Kuebel:

Yeah, are you ready sort of deal? I was just excited. I was so stoked. And here we are.

Kate Young:

What does that mean to you that you’re working on these cars now?

Matt Kuebel:

As I stated before, I was originally a NASCAR guy, but it’s funny now that I’m in IndyCar, a lot of people who think about Penske, they’re like, “Oh, so what’s the cup side like?” They’ll talk about NASCAR a lot. But yeah, now that I’m an IndyCar, I wouldn’t change it. IndyCars are so like, to me, they’re way cooler. They go so much faster. They’re more, well, arguably more complex depending on who you ask.

But yeah, growing up in Indiana, like I said earlier, my parents always went to the Brickyard 400, but you always knew what was happening with the Indy 500. And so, everybody in the state of Indiana knew when the Indy 500 was, and there was always talk about it. Whenever May came around, that’s when it would start to get real.

Kate Young:

And Matt specifically remembers the first time Roger Penske, founder and chairman of Penske Corporation walked by him in the shop.

Matt Kuebel:

When I came down for a visit before I was hired, I was just in awe for one, the majority of the IndyCar team was gone that weekend for a race. So, there was only a couple of cars around and pretty much nobody. But I was still just in awe. And I remember the first time that Mr. Penske, Roger Penske walked by and it’s like, “That’s him.” Yup, he’s just a couple of feet away now. It’s like, “Yeah, that’s my boss.”

Kate Young:

No pressure. And speaking of Mr. Penske, Penske Entertainment Corporation, a part of Penske Corporation owns the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the NTT IndyCar Series. So, what does it mean to Team Penske to have a driver win the Indy 500 at the Penske owned IMS?

Matt Kuebel:

Being in Team Penske, it’s very special to us and we’ve had a long history of success. And so, we want to come back. But yeah, there’s a buzz, a hum. Everything is focused on, even if we’re working towards a different race, there is still a focus on Indy, on development for Indy, testing for Indy. The 500 is the most important event on our calendar, probably because it has the longest history and the most tradition of any of the races that IndyCar has gone.

IndyCar has gone through some weird years of splitting series and whatnot, but the thing that’s always been true is the 500, with it being as big as it is. I think it’s one of the, if not the biggest single day sporting events in the world. The attention is there, the eyes are on you, you either perform or you don’t. One tiny minuscule mistake can just take you completely out of the race.

And so, you have to button all the hatches, cross all your Ts, all your Is, and make sure everything is absolutely perfect. Then, you have at least a shot to win. I mean, even if you do all the things right, you can still be knocked out.

Kate Young:

Matt shared some of his favorite Purdue memories, plus he discusses the role this special university has played in his life from meeting lifelong friends to getting the opportunity to work for one of the most successful teams in Motorsports.

Matt Kuebel:

I was at the 2019 Ohio State Football game where Purdue knocked them off. That was just absolutely electric. And I, growing up near Ohio and Kentucky in that area, there were a lot of diehard Ohio State fans that I knew, and I felt it in my heart knowing the gut punch that we gave them, so that was super exciting.

I was also at the 2021 Michigan State Upset. So, I mean, the run that they had the last couple of years, spoiling, spoiler makers, spoiling big, big teams, perfect years, those are fun games to be at. And then, also having the first year there with my sister, we went to I think every home basketball game and we sat in the lower bowl because we both had paint grew.

And so, being in Mackey that year, we had a good team. I think we made it to the Sweet 16. I mean, we’ve had good teams for the past five plus years. But yeah, sitting in the lower bowl my freshman year about every game, it’s just the atmosphere and the intro, and Mackey, and being down there is just unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It gives me cold chills thinking about it.

So, those are some of my favorite memories. Besides giving me skills of being an engineer and everything, the experience that comes with that, it’s given me some of my best friends that I never would’ve thought I would find. I still talk to a lot of them weekly. Some of them aren’t engineers, some of them are engineers, and it’s been great people. It’s given me some core memories. Going to sports games with my sister, a big 10 school, that’s just absolutely incredible to have those.

And then, it’s also just helped me transition from being a high school kid to, here I am today, working on one of the most well-known race teams in the history of Motorsport, and it’s given me that opportunity. And it’s also given me the confidence to know that whatever lies ahead for me, I have been through Purdue and it’s been rigorous, but I made it through, and I have this confidence and these capabilities to tackle anything that comes ahead of me. On a side note, it also introduced me to Breakfast Club in the Neon Cactus, and Harry’s, and I’ll leave those at that.

Kate Young:

As for Matt’s favorite part of his job, it’s simply being immersed in that Team Penske culture and legacy.

Matt Kuebel:

Being in the shop is very cool. To be a part of such a historic team and successful team in the past, there was definitely an adjustment period of this is the Penske way. There’s no, absolutely no cutting corners on anything. Sometimes, it’s challenging, I will admit. Other times, it’s just like, “Wow, okay, I understand why they are who they are and how they’ve gotten here.”

So, you walk around the shop and I look up because the shop’s out over there and I can, there’s a whole row of cars that I can look at. But you walk in and you just see a row of cars and you’re like, “Wow, these are going to be on the track on TV, or these are going to be on the Indy 500. This car could pull in the victory lane at any given weekend and make history.” And there’s historic memorabilia, banners around all over. So, just really feeling a part of that is definitely very, very cool.

Kate Young:

And now, I’d like to introduce you to an IndyCar and Team Penske veteran, Mike. He’s been in the racing industry for almost two decades now. Mike is an aerodynamicist for Team Penske and similar to Matt, he works on all three team Penske IndyCars between Josef, Will and Scott. This Wisconsin native discusses when he first heard about Purdue.

Mike Koenigs:

So, when I was in high school, I went to a couple of internships or I guess shadowing days and got some exposure, some engineering around Wisconsin. And locally, there was no one doing aircraft, which is what I really wanted to do. So, after a couple of these small experiences, I realized that I was going to look at a major that was dedicated only to aircraft design.

And so, when I looked for the schools in the area, that was my shortlist, was any place that had aeronautical or astronomical engineering. So, from that standpoint, Purdue became on the top of the list based on the reputation. And also, because it was within driving distance to Wisconsin. I went to look at a couple of other schools and Purdue felt more like home. So, it skewed my decision or skewed the way I was looking at it in terms of what school it shows.

Kate Young:

Mike says his experience with the Purdue School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and his experience now working for Team Penske are really quite similar.

Mike Koenigs:

Both programs pile a whole bunch of work say, “Here’s what the expectation is, here’s what you need to do, here’s what we want to achieve. And then, you go through the steps and figure it out.” Purdue in the aero department specifically tended to provide the most amount of challenge in terms of subject material, but then there was a corresponding workload along with it that one had to manage at the same time.

There’s no different than being on racing where you’re trying to do multiple things during the same time, or you’re trying to manage different departments or different people and try to get all everyone in the same alignment, and moving in the same direction.

So, I would say from preparation standpoint, when I went from a smaller high school in Wisconsin to Purdue, which was a large step, just understanding going from a very small student body to a very large student body, and then having to interact with a whole bunch of people, like interacting with a whole bunch of different people from different backgrounds, it ended up prepping me very well for being in racing where you have a diverse group of opinions, diverse group of perspectives, and the people you interact with come from very different backgrounds. But everyone has the same singular focus of improving the car and improving our performance in order to win races.

Kate Young:

Now, originally, Mike was interested in working on airplanes. He explains why he ultimately went into motorsports instead.

Mike Koenigs:

Partly, the reason I went to racing instead of aircraft is I got enough exposure to aircraft to realize that the design cycles are your normal projects for five to seven years. So, you might sit at your desk for a couple of years, design a wing, design a landing gear, design something, and you never get to see it or you bury something to see it actually in flight or on the plane.

And I know this has changed over the last 25 years, but when I started 24 years ago, that’s where it was. In racing since the day I got here almost 20 years ago, we have a mentality that if you find something on a Monday and you can get on a car by Friday, that happens, and we do whatever we can.

So, there’s a lot of times in the past we don’t have as much freedom with the current cars as we used to, but when we had the freedom what the older cars, we would come up with an idea Monday design it, I would work late night, figure it out, we’d issue it, get it manufactured by Wednesday, test it on Wednesday, and then ship it to the track for Friday.

So, it’s a completely different cycle. It’s a completely different timeframe. I know more industries moving that way, but I think racing is still a pinnacle of that. Whereas, if we can find something and tested on Wednesday and have enough information, we will race and test it at track on Friday. And if it’s beneficial, we’ll actually use it that weekend.

So, it’s one of those things where a lot of people outside of racing and outside of engineering don’t understand how fast stuff can be turned around nowadays. And there’s a lot of technology goes behind it. And there’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think I would be exposed to at other companies if I wasn’t at Penske.

Kate Young:

I thought that was a super interesting way of looking at things and it totally makes sense. Mike has an awesome story about how he actually broke into the world of professional racing. It involves mailing letters. That’s right, kids, there was no such thing as email back then. So, Mike resorted to a little concept called snail mail.

Mike Koenigs:

When I got down with my bachelor’s, I did a short contract position with General Electric Research out in Albany, New York. And through that process, I got interested in racing more and more. I had always wanted, as a fan, enjoyed watching racing, but I started to learning more about the technical side. Then, I had the opportunity to attend a test session at Run America with a friend mine, one from my friends from grad school.

And in talking to the race engineers there, I realized it wasn’t as exclusive or as difficult to get into as I originally intended or thought. I had the perception, and a lot of people still do that. Motorsports is difficult to enter or difficult to achieve. It’s just a different niche, and it’s no different than any very specific field of engineering.

I think when I was graduating, the differences that there wasn’t the resources there are now to understand who’s in racing. There was only small specific racing magazines and stuff like that. So, you could get all your innovation on aerospace or automotive, so you can go to your Fords or GMs or your Boeings or your Lockheeds.

But in terms of trying to understand how you would actually enter into racing and work with likes of Team Penske or a Formula 1 team or a NASCAR team, that wasn’t very well-defined from a school side, and it wasn’t very well-defined from industry side. And there’s also a lot of differences in the different departments like the aero department, I think there’s only a handful of us that were really interested in racing in general.

And I was one of the few that when I came back to my graduate degree, put my hand up and said, “I want to go into racing.” It was a little bit different than everyone else’s path. In terms of eventually working into racing, after I did my small stint in GE, my advisor at Purdue, professor Crossley and my boss at General Electric, Dr. Sealy went to grad school together at Arizona State and through arrangements, we figured out a way for me to go back to grad school to do research for General Electric.

So, when I was doing my masters, I was actually working as an employee of General Electric, and they sponsored my research. During that whole time being on a GE and going through the research when I realized I wanted go racing, then I started contacting anyone I could find in racing, and I was very pleasantly surprised the amount of feedback I got from everyone from technical directors and aerodynamicist, and Formula 1 to IndyCar teams, to NASCAR teams, and put that all together to try to figure out how I build a study plan to help me achieve the goal of getting racing.

And then, once I graduated with my masters, I answered an internship advertisement for a small company in Georgia. It was going to potentially lead a full-time position, but it was not guaranteed. So, then I went down to Georgia and I worked for approximately eight months as an intern at Panos. And that then turned into a full-time position at the aerodynamicist on the IndyCar.

Some of the students and I like my colleagues in the grad school, we talked about it and still didn’t really feel we knew exactly how to do it. And it was at the test where I met the race engineers at Elkhart Motorcycle Test where we got to the point where he talked enough into realizing it was just difficult is when we finding the right person to apply to, the right person to talk to. But it was no different than applying for any other job.

It was, I guess at that time, since it was nearly 25 years ago, when you look at it, you don’t know how junior everyone is or you don’t know the entry levels. When you go to a Boeing or you go to a GM, it’s already understood that there’s going to be senior level people, there’s going to be entry level people, and everywhere in between. In racing, when you only see two or three people on a timing stand or you see a small amount of people attending each race, you don’t really know how many people actually work at the shop or you don’t really know how many people actually it takes to run a car.

So, from that standpoint, it was hard to know unless you interned with the team itself, how you would acquire a full-time position with the team. So, then going through that and talking to writing, I probably wrote close to 200 to 300 letters to anyone I could find in racing, using magazine articles and working it backwards where the address was, where the team was.

Again, back then, the internet wasn’t available when I first started school there, but it’s still, especially racing everyone since it’s a really close knit but really private industry, it’s also hard to find people. So, I would use magazine articles, took them in cross reference who was at what team, and then reach out to them. And I probably got a 25% to 30% return rate of people replying. And then, I took the information from each of those replies and worked it all together.

Kate Young:

Before recording this interview, I was curious to get into what exactly an aerodynamicist does. So, what’s a day in the life like for Mike?

Mike Koenigs:

Every day is somewhat different, which is always good and it’s what keeps it fresh and it keeps it new every day. My primary responsibility is to perform all the aerodynamic testing for the team, so that will run the gambit from wind tunnel testing through track testing.

So, whether it’s an assigned program that we’ve thought out and done the part design for, and then we build the parts and get everything manufactured and assembled or whether it’s going to the track and a sporting the team in terms of making small changes to the car for setup in general development of performance.

My days usually vary somewhere between starting in the morning doing design work, so designing components either for our car or for our test beds. And then, spending the rest of the afternoon doing data analysis or looking at results from previous testing or developing run plans and test plans for upcoming tests. Like I was trying to say before, it is very diverse when you walk in the door some days, what you get into, which may have no bearing on your specific discipline or your specific field of study

But over the years, you’ve come accustomed to helping in other areas that your personality suits to or you have more strengths in depending on what your department is. So, we’ve helped on various levels of all the way to the car and it’s one of those things where you sometimes you just grab because no one else is available, and it’s an important performance criteria that needs maybe solved or it’s just a specific problem that’s something you might design a couple of years ago and it’s someone needs some help.

So, it goes the whole gambit. And like I said, it keeps it super interesting because it’s never… I don’t think in the last couple of years it’s ever been the same week to week and day to day.

Kate Young:

Mike highlights his work on all three Team Penske IndyCars.

Mike Koenigs:

I’m responsible for delivering all the data and all of the setup information for the team. So, my data and all the work I do is disseminated through all the race engineers, which then goes to set up the cars for the drivers. Since I’ve been here, it’s never been specific for one driver. I will help on projects or design work that may be specific to a driver in terms of fit, finish or something they want specifically.

But in general, when it comes to all the information, the information is shared across the board uniformly. And on a prior weekly, monthly basis, I check in with each race engineer to make sure that they’re getting what they need or they need to see the data in a certain way or do we need to start making different presentations or do you want to see the data in a slightly different view.

And we try to accommodate as much as possible due to time. The race engineers do travel to every race, very busy and very focused on what they’re trying to do specifically and trying to manage their entire car with the aerodynamics being only one portion of it.

Kate Young:

Last year within the IndyCar series, Team Penske had nine total wins with Will Power, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin all visiting Victory Lane at least once. Team Penske finished first, second and fourth and the championship standings overall. And Team Penske continued to blaze a new trail, becoming the first team in history to win both the IndyCar and NASCAR championships in the same season. Mike reflects on the camaraderie at Team Penske.

Mike Koenigs:

At the end of the day, collectively as a team, this includes the IndyCar, NASCAR and sports car areas and any other projects that we’re developing or participating in, there’s a very strong camaraderie between everyone. There’s a lot of cross pollination between the different teams. We do development projects together. Everyone’s pretty familiar with each other and their skillsets, especially in my case, I’m fairly close with all the aero guys on the other different teams.

So, we’ll go back and forth and congratulate each other when there’s a win on another series. And as a team, as the whole company, we always celebrate race wins collectively, whether it’s a lunch environment or a team celebration in the afternoon. And usually, what that entails is some celebratory toast as well as watching the recap from the race and everyone can see the success on the team.

And fortunately, for us, our drivers all live pretty close. So, one of the benefits of being here is our drivers when they can, unless they’re traveling, are usually here on site and if they can’t, they remote in and with all the Zoom and everything else has been pretty cool to have them, either record a message or join live video and express the appreciation for all the team.

It is truly a team environment. We’re all trying to move in the same direction and push in the same direction. We’re one team, one organization. We win as a group. And if we struggle, we struggle as a group.

Kate Young:

As we discussed earlier in this episode with Matt, Roger Penske is one of the most recognizable names in American Motorsports. Here’s Mike.

Mike Koenigs:

I’ve always admired the organization as the way it’s run and the way it’s presenting itself. And more so, Mr. Penske specifically like the standard he sets. And from day one when I entered into the facility, like we had the perceptions from the outside of how it worked and how professional it would be and stuff like that. It is that, and then someone, once you get inside of everything.

It’s the access to the latest technology that we’re trying to do. It’s the constant push. It’s the constant demand. No day is boring whatsoever. At times, the pace can be super frantic. April and May are at times a little rough on my family due to all our testing requirements. But at the same time, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, it’s no different than your push for finals or you’re pushing a final project at Purdue. It’s just magnified in terms of the expectations and the consequences of what you’re trying to do or how much you can actually find in a given design cycle.

Kate Young:

So, what does the iconic Indy 500 mean to Mike after all of these years?

Mike Koenigs:

Being part of a couple Indy wins, you realize how special and how fortunate you are to be part of it. There are years where we’re probably faster than we show and you may not win. And there’s years where you’re like, “Well, I think we did the best job we can. We have a pretty good car.” And then, we win the race. The amount of prep work that goes into it to large amount of develop work that goes into it is always satisfying.

And the better the car performs or the better the team doesn’t is always satisfying. But every year just the amount of effort we do to dig, define that last little bit of performance is different, and we just try to keep striving on that. And it is Indy 500 in Indianapolis specifically is the overall goal of our company. It is permeated through everything we do. It’s the first objective of the year.

You can easily say, okay, we were not willing to do X, Y and Z, and then you bring it up and say, “I think it’s going to make us a little bit quicker in Indy.” And it’s like, “Oh, okay, cool, we’ll do it.” It is very intense and very hard to explain until you get on the inside. It’s one of those things where if you were to work on something for Indy every single day, that would be a success for the year.

And in terms of that, it is by far one of the hardest races to win. It’s by far one of the hardest races to qualify for, especially upfront all the time. And from that, on the outside looking in, you always see, okay, you must take a lot of work. And then, you get inside and you realize how much everyone does all year just for this one race.

Kate Young:

Now, Mike isn’t a race engineer, so he doesn’t travel to every race with the team, but he does of course watch all the races. I ask him how you will be watching this series Indy 500.

Mike Koenigs:

I’ll be sitting with my kids and my lovely wife. And my kids and my wife will be cheering and yelling and rooting everybody on, and I will be quietly watching the race trying to take it all in.

Kate Young:

Sweating.

Mike Koenigs:

No, I get more nervous for qualifying than I do for the race. The qualifying is more of the car being on the razor’s edge of performance, and the race is more of a polished setup for the drivers to feel comfortable for three to four hours of racing where qualifying is essentially every lap. You’re laying it out to the limit of the car and trying to make sure that you push it as hard as you possibly can to get every little bit of performance out, but not cross the line where you’ve either pushed the car too hard and the performance starts to degrade or you push the car too hard and you have an incident.

Kate Young:

Our This Is Purdue podcast team had the opportunity to attend an Indy test day at IMS in April. And Team Penske’s, Josef Newgarden had the fastest lap that day out of 33 other Indy car drivers. He hit a peak of 237 miles per hour at turn three. Josef also recently won his second consecutive victory at Texas Motor Speedway. A 1.5 mile oval track in April. Mike explains how these wins for Team Penske can be analyzed before the Indy 500 to make additional tweaks and improvements to the cars.

Mike Koenigs:

Josef’s results are encouraging, so Scott and Wills. But we usually just use it mainly as a test session to then prove out our data, prove out our predictions, prove of our simulation, all the stuff that we work on to try to give the race engineers the best information available, so they can make the best decisions at the track.

It does also allow us to prove out some stuff that they may have been working on all off season that although there was an oval race that Josef won at Texas, Texas is enough of a difference to Indy that it doesn’t translate exactly one to one. So, what’s good at Texas may not be exactly good at Indy. Yeah, it might be not exactly good, but it’s usually on the right track.

So, you might have something that’s really, really good at Texas and it’s better at Indy or you might have something that’s okay at Texas but looks like it has some promise. And then, once the guys have a little bit more time to fine tune it, it is excellent at Indy. Before I got in the series, I thought a lot of it was just cookie cutter. What works at this race is going to work at that race, or for fast, here we should be fast there.

And over the years, the nuance between all the tracks and the nuance between all the setups and the nuance between whether it’s a permanent road course like we just raced at Barber, or whether it’s a temporary street course like St. Pete or it’s short oval like Gateway or it’s Indianapolis. Each one has a different requirement, each one has a different driver parameter and stuff like that.

Kate Young:

And speaking of Josef, although he is a two-time NTT IndyCar series champion and the winning this current American driver in the series, he doesn’t have that coveted title of an Indy 500 winner under his belt quite yet. Here’s Mike on his experience working with Indy 500 winning drivers.

Mike Koenigs:

Indy 500 is a special race, and no matter how hard it is to win and how many people try, and the amount of effort and work that goes into it is pretty intense. So, one, we are successful and I’ve been successful a handful of times. It is pretty special in terms of which driver wins it because we know them personally, and you know that a lot of them have been striving for a long time in their careers and it’s basic, especially here, it can be a career pinnacle achievement. It’s special for everyone.

But here it has that level more of a significance and just knowing the amount of work that all the guys do. I don’t know other teams are, but we have a fair amount of interaction with mechanics and the truck drivers and all the support staff, and everything goes into the car from the people in the car shop to painters.

And so, from that standpoint, every day you see how much work everyone puts into it, and it is a truly collective effort. So, from that standpoint, it is really satisfying. Sometimes, you may be completely exhausted as we watch the race with all the effort you put into it, and you may not have the right perspective in what you’ve done or whatever and feel satisfied, but you are always satisfied for everybody else, and you’re always happy for everybody else as well.

It is a large amount of celebration for it, and personally it’s been a pretty high pinnacle achievement for me, and to be happy to be part of so many wins. But then, at the same time, like I was saying, we essentially turn the page Monday and start focusing on next year and try to figure out what we didn’t do right this year and try to prove upon that. And what we did, we try to magnify or amplify for the next year.

Kate Young:

As for Mike’s favorite race, it’s actually not the Indy 500, it’s the annual IndyCar Race at Road America, located midway between Milwaukee and Green Bay in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. Mike explains the importance of this track to him and his family.

Mike Koenigs:

And it’s the race my dad used to take me when I was little. We went probably six, seven, eight times since I was little until I graduated. And then, it was, I believe it was the first IndyCar race I took my wife to. So, it does, that track has a special place for me. It’s also local to where my family is in Wisconsin. So, it’s the whole area. And specifically, the race in general, but it’s the whole area of that part of Wisconsin that’s what’s familiar.

Kate Young:

This year’s 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge is on Sunday, May 28th, 2023. Both Matt and Mike say they don’t make any predictions when it comes to choosing an Indy 500 winner. Here’s Mike.

Mike Koenigs:

I personally don’t choose a driver.

Kate Young:

Okay.

Mike Koenigs:

I’ve learned that a long time ago. That usually comes back to haunt me from the particular driver, even if I predict for them to win, because usually I get the year wrong, but I don’t get the driver wrong. So, yeah, from that standpoint, I’ll say I hope that Team Penske wins the 500. And I will say that I hope Team Penske wins the poll. To say that I have a driver in the fight, I don’t.

Kate Young:

And here’s Matt.

Matt Kuebel:

I do know that it means a lot to a lot of people to win the 500. It is just such a special thing. And for it to be in Indiana, the historic factor of the 500, just the worldwide well-known aspect of it, you can talk to anybody in the Motorsport world, not even US, but they know about the Indy 500. They will know who wins the Indy 500. To be on a team that has a chance to win the Indy 500 is just, it makes me feel very, very… It makes me feel really good. I definitely wouldn’t have got here if I wouldn’t have chosen to go to Purdue.

Kate Young:

Finally, I asked both Matt and Mike, why they’re proud to be boiler makers? Here’s Mike.

Mike Koenigs:

I think it’s more the people who I’ve met, the relationships that I have. It was pretty daunting for starting up Purdue, going to a smaller high school and entering into the university with, I think at that time my freshman class was 7,000 people, which was a little overwhelming and a little bit to take in at first. But once I got my feet under me and experienced the camaraderie and the struggles and everything that Purdue afford to, it was as rewarding as racing has been.

I credit a lot of the stuff that I do now to the knowledge I learned at Purdue. But different than I think some other schools, Purdue also tends to foster an environment of continually learning and curiosity. And I think from a racing standpoint, that’s actually more important a lot than sometimes just the technical part. You can have someone super smart in any major, any degree, and they’ll work to a limit.

Here, if you find something that’s curious and you find speed in it, we usually follow that path to the logic of inclusion. And at times, since I’ve been here, it’s not always been, like I said previously on the technical side, it could be organizational or it could be just helping some guys do their job more efficiently, like designing some vis to make stuff easier for someone to do. Or it could be something completely non-aerodynamic related, but tangential.

And if it seems to make cargo faster, we follow that. It’s hard to exactly explain. A lot of people who enter into racing may not stay in their current field, but it’s a truly merit-based, at least in our team, it’s truly a merit-based industry. So, if you find something, you come in as an engineer, like I say, it’s your designer and you come in and you have a niche for something, you show an aptitude for something. A couple of years later, you may no longer do in design, you may be doing that, knowing that that is what gives the team the best chance of the highest performance.

And I think that’s what you learn in Purdue is some days may be overwhelming, some days may not able to see the end of the tunnel. But you just dig deep, you use your plan and you use your ability to piece everything together, and you just keep pushing to get to the end of it. Purdue to me exemplifies perseverance, it exemplifies dedication and all that stuff that I think a lot of us who, especially in the engineering schools, I think a lot of us get a second gear and you don’t realize how much you can actually do until you try to dig yourself out of all the late-night holes of all the homework, and all the labs and everything else you need to do that.

Years before they’d be like, “Oh, I’m pretty good. I know science, I know math, I’m pretty good at this stuff.” And then, you get to Purdue and it resets your expectations and resets your baseline of what you think is possible. And I’ve met a lot of engineers across the years that I think other schools still do a good job. But from my experience on average, well not even average, it’s not my experience. You can tell the difference between a Purdue engineering grad and other schools.

Kate Young:

And here’s Matt.

Matt Kuebel:

Whenever I meet somebody that graduated from Purdue, you know they’re very… You know you can trust that person that they’ve been through the ringer. They’ve learned a lot. There’s a very good sense of tradition about the community. A lot of them know the history. I probably should learn more of the history, but I get a little bit of osmosis just talking to people.

But they’re the type of people you want in your corner, and they’re trustworthy, defendable, and hardworking. And I know one of the taglines during COVID was Purdue Grit, but these boilermakers are gritty and they get things done.

Kate Young:

Absolutely. Does Team Penske see that in you too?

Matt Kuebel:

I’ve been told a little bit, maybe, yes, try to. So, I’m still pretty new. But I think they enjoy having me around and I definitely enjoy being around. So, I definitely going to take the opportunity to learn as much as I can and to contribute as much as I can.

Kate Young:

And as for Mike, he’s looking forward to teaching fellow boilermaker, Matt, the ropes as he grows in his Penske career.

Mike Koenigs:

There’s a lot of cool stuff that really excited to show Matthew. But unfortunately, I can’t share it outside. It’s a really interesting industry, and at the end of the day, just like when we brought Matthew on, it’s one of those things where you just try to pay it forward. Like everyone who gave me all the advice when I wrote all those letters, I try my best.

Kate Young:

Thank you so much to both Matt and Mike for being part of This Is Purdue. They were, after all, a little bit busy, but they still made the time for us. We wish Team Penske the best of luck in this year’s Indy 500. Head over to our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue to check out some of our videos with Matt and Mike.

Plus, head over to our persistent pursuit stories.purdue.edu to check out all of the Purdue related Indy 500 items. This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography is led by Ted Shellenberger and collaboration with Jon Garcia, Thad Boone and Alli Chaney. Our social media marketing is led by Ashley Schreyer. Our podcast design is led by Caitlyn Freeville. Our podcast team project manager is Emily Jesulaitis. Our podcast YouTube promotion is managed by Megan Hoskins and Kirsten Voris. And our podcast research is led by our This Is Purdue intern Sophie Ritz.

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.