Machinists Union Racing
Indy Car team

Machinists Union Racing was a CART Indy Car team owned by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and run by the IAM's national automotive coordinator Andy Kenopensky, a former appointee to the United States Metric Board. The team competed in CART from 1981 to 1990.
The team was the brainchild of IAM president William Winpisinger. It began sponsoring racing in 1978 by sponsoring a USAC Champ Car race at Trenton Speedway and sponsoring the Indy Car driven by Jerry Karl. The union formed its own team in 1981. From 1981 to 1988 it was additionally sponsored by Schaefer Beer alongside the Machinists Union branding. The team's most notable drivers during this time were Josele Garza who drove for the team from 1983 to 1987 and Roger Mears who drove for the team in 1982 and 1983. Garza finished 12th in the CART championship in 1985 and 11th in 1987. Garza brought the team its best CART finish of second at the Michigan 500 in 1986. Mears finished 9th in 1982 and 12th in 1983 and finished fourth at Riverside International Raceway in 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Machinists Union Racing” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.