Daytona Rolex 04/02/2001   Crawford Trouble   ©Andrew S. Hartwell With all the testing done before Daytona, there were never any indications of transmission trouble on the new Crawford. But that was before Daytona and today, trouble has come - very early in the first hour. The #27 Judd Crawford came into the garage area under mechanic power and the team immediately set about pulling the entire rear-end assembly a la Audi at Le Mans. Max Crawford monitored the changeover of the Gemini transmission, which didn’t come off as quickly as the team had practiced it. Ross Bentley commented he believed one of the lines was pinched in the re-assembly. Team leader Kevin Doran took charge personally and made the needed adjustment to get the car back on track. Starter Didier Theys stayed in the car throughout the switch and once the rear bodywork was back in place, he quickly pulled away under Judd power and returned to the race. Crawford: “We are taking the unit apart to learn what actually went wrong. We are a bit mystified as to what actually caused it. We have 3 transmissions with us so we don’t have to depend on this one. But we need to find the cause. We never had a problem with this before today.” Soon, but not as soon as practiced, Didier was off again and the transmission breakdown commenced. Copyright ©2000-©2023 TotalMotorSport