Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt fought a close battle for the Associated Press' "Driver of the 20th Century" award.
Over the last 50 years, one man's auto racing achievements tower over both of those legendary champions.
Roger Penske didn't achieve his record-setting success as a driver, though he was a very good one in his day.
In fact, Penske, an established sports car champion, once turned down a test drive in an Indy car for a ride that eventually went to Andretti.
Since he formed Penske Racing in 1966, Penske has provided everything that any driver could want. His teams have set a standard that all others aim to emulate.
When you beat Team Penske, you know that you've beaten the best.
"He's the guy that sets the bar, and he's the guy that I wanted to model my team after," said Chip Ganassi, who over the last 20 years has emerged as Penske's most serious and enduring rival.
"To have a team that sets the bar like Roger's team does makes it possible for people like me to come along and challenge him," Ganassi added. "He's a great friend, a great competitor and a great mentor to many people in this sport, not just myself."
On Wednesday in Charlotte, some 1,400 people will gather to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Penske Racing. Many will be former employees, who have built Team Penske into a powerhouse organization that currently employs more than 400 people and fields cars in NASCAR, IndyCar and Australian V8 Supercars out of a 105-acre site in Mooresville, North Carolina.
That's a drop in the bucket compared to Penske's "real world" business empire. Starting out with a single Chevrolet dealership in Philadelphia, he has grown Penske Corporation into an organization with revenues in excess of $23 billion that employs 47,000 associates worldwide.
Clearly, there is much more on Roger Penske's plate than auto racing. Yet the sporting side of his life is what continues to motivate him.
He works 20-hour days, whether he's in the office or at the racetrack. And while he takes racing every bit as seriously as he does any of his other business entities, that's what somehow qualifies as his leisure time.
Fifty years after starting out with driver Mark Donohue, chief mechanic Karl Kainhofer and a handful of part-timers that filled in the pit crew on race weekends, Penske's racing team has grown well beyond his wildest dreams.
What drives him hasn't changed.
"Winning the next race," he told ESPN.com. "We've always had one goal, and that's to win.
"One thing I've often said to my people is that we're not in the racing business -- we're racers, and there's a difference."
Team Penske's racing record is remarkable. It includes 181 Indy car race wins, including 16 in the Indianapolis 500.
Penske drivers have won 13 Indy car championships, and the team has collected a total of 27 series championships, including prestigious titles in NASCAR and SCCA Can-Am and Trans-Am competition.
Despite worldwide racing success, including a Formula One race win in a car of his own manufacture, Penske's peerless record at Indianapolis is what will forever define him.
He entered the "500" with his jack-of-all-trades Donohue in 1969, winning Rookie of the Year honors. The first victory, also in Donohue's hands, came in 1972.
Since then, a litany of great drivers have added their names to Penske's Indianapolis honor roll, including Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, Helio Castroneves and three members of the Unser family.
Rick Mears earned all four of his Indy wins while driving for Penske, while Juan Pablo Montoya claimed the most recent, just last year.
"The Indy 500 is an iconic race and the one that everybody wants to win," Penske said. "The fact that we've been so successful there is probably something that people will talk about for a long time.
"But we're a proud team; we don't over-celebrate because we know that you've got to go back down to ground zero to start the next year," he continued. "In racing, you've got to have short-term goals, and that means next week. If you start trying to figure out how to do it three or four weeks from now, I think you start losing focus."
It took longer for Penske to achieve championship success in NASCAR. Donohue and Bobby Allison won races for the team between 1973 and '77, but it didn't compete in stock cars for more than a decade until Penske Racing South joined forces with Rusty Wallace to emerge as a championship contender.
Penske took his first victory in the Daytona 500 with Ryan Newman in 2008. Joey Logano added another win in 2015, while Brad Keselowski earned Penske's only NASCAR Cup Series championship to date in 2012.
Pressure and high expectations are byproducts of that success. Having established itself as the team to beat for so long, when Penske Racing goes through a fallow stretch, it makes people take note.
"My biggest problem is managing expectations," Penske admitted. "There are so many variables, and we have our own personal expectations of our people and our teams. We expect to be and want to be at the top of the charts, and when we're not, then we've got to manage there."
There is no sign of that happening anytime soon. Montoya won the Indianapolis 500 and was narrowly edged to the IndyCar Series title by Ganassi's Scott Dixon in 2015, while Logano emerged as the driver to beat in the Sprint Cup Series.
Penske has always had an innate feel for hiring drivers, and it's interesting to note that his Indy car team features two of the most veteran drivers in the series, while in NASCAR, he has trended young in recent years, building his team around Keselowski and Logano.
The Penske driver roster over the years is a veritable who's-who among champions.
"I wouldn't have been able to call my career complete had I not driven for Roger Penske," said Andretti, who drove Indy cars part-time for Penske during the full-time Formula One phase of his career.
"He represents the elite -- the creme de la creme -- in the same category as Enzo Ferrari and Colin Chapman. There is a definite status symbol that goes with driving for Roger Penske because he represents the very best."
Approaching his 79th birthday, Penske shows no sign of slowing down, whether he's calling shots in the boardroom or on the pit wall.
He never likes to look too far ahead, but he can't help noticing a nice symmetry in the fact that Penske Racing is celebrating its 50th anniversary in the year of the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500.
A lot has changed in the last half-century, but the next race is still the most important race. Especially when it's Indy.
"I can't remember how it must have felt back in 1972, but it must have felt like climbing Mount Everest to win that race," Penske said this week from Detroit, where he collected the "Baby Borg" trophy that is awarded to the winning car owner at Indianapolis for the 16th time.
"Each time as we've been able to be successful, you put those away and work on the next one.
"You talk about the 50th anniversary and the 100th Indianapolis 500 and put them together, and it would be awful special," he added. "I'll tell you one thing. We're going to do our best to be there."