Johnson: DJR's in great hands with Penske major ownership

For years, Dick Johnson has fought for his race team - and now, in conjunction with another motorsport icon, he is hoping it will flourish.

Becoming DJR Team Penske from 2015, with superstar Marcos Ambrose behind the wheel, having motorsport heavyweight Roger Penske buy into the two car team was an opportunity not to be missed.

"To have Marcos as a part of our team is a real bonus and certainly with Roger and the Penske organisation, what they can bring to our team will be second-to-none, I can assure you," Johnson said.

"It's one of those situations where anyone who had this sort of opportunity would never ever give it up ... the opportunities here are endless with the technical expertise we can get from Penske to sort of integrate with the team we currently have here and the facility we have, I think will be nothing sort of spectacular."

Pending approval from the V8 Supercars board, Penske will own 51 per cent and Johnson 49 per cent - though Johnson and general manager Ryan Story will remain at the helm in Australia.

Penske's right hand man Tim Cindric said the close-knit group of people at the race team was an asset and while they would bring in some key staff, those behind the scenes are what help the wheels turn.

"I feel like this isn't a matter of Penske taking over the DJR organisation, as far as personnel," Cindric said.

"The people ... they were the core of the group, and the core group was still very strong, it just needed enhancement and needed further resource, whether momentarily or more importantly, through management or other people.

"What I've come to find out in this journey is that Ryan Story is somebody that probably is very under-spoken, but he's somebody that we feel very confident in being the managing director of this new partnership that we have going forward. We feel like he's the guy to lead this."

Coming into the team will be Jeff Swartwout as team manager, who assisted in the start up of Penske's Posrche Spider program back in 2005 and Nationwide program.

Alongside as technical director will be Australian Nick Hughes, who has been with Penske Shocks, in the world of NASCAR, and worked with PWR Radiators.

The final piece of the puzzle is John Crennan - recently managing director at Nissan Motorsport, and co-founder of Holden Racing Team - to handle the association between Penske's commercial vehicles and the racing program.

While some integration is already happening, it is expected this new structure will not all fall into place until the end of this season.

One of the important openings in the team, however, is the second driver.

"Right now we're really focusing on Ambrose and we need to go through approvals with the association before we would get into a second driver," Penske said.

"We felt, let's get ourselves announced, get our organisation together - we've got four or five months before the season starts and that's probably best."

Scott Pye and David Wall drive for the team at the moment and while Johnson said Pye was doing a great job, a second driver has not been discussed as yet.

V8supercars.com.au believes Pye could be a key player in the driver movements for 2015.