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Daytona

Rolex

04/02/2001

Can Kudzu Do?

Downing May

©Andrew S. Hartwell

We are sitting here in the auxiliary media room at the Daytona Speedway for two reasons that come immediately to mind.
A. It is raining again, like it has been on and off (mostly on) all weekend. Media types with moppy wet heads of hair are about as welcome to come into a pit stall to ask nosy questions as are unwashed dogs that enter a gourmet restaurant. You can get in pretty quick if the door is open but you will get chased out even quicker.
B. We needed to get to our laptop to craft the right words to tell the world that Jim Downing’s Kudzu – no typo there, I said Jim Downing’s Kudzu – is the current SRP class leader. Butch Leitzinger pulled the Dyson Racing #16 Riley & Scott off the track with a blown motor in the 21st hour, relinquishing the class lead to the veteran from Georgia.

Now, the Kudzu chassis and the Mazda motor have a long history of being there at the end. Jim Downing even brought it home first in class at Le Mans. But this is the other 24-hour happening and hey, this is the time he might just go for the double. But you don’t go into a pit stall to ask a driver if he is feeling real good right now when the race isn’t finished. I know. I asked Howard Katz.

“I’m feeling good but there are still two and a half hours to go.”

Wise man that Mr. Katz. Wish the same were true of the ‘gentleman’ asking the questions.

Earlier the Downing-Atlanta crew had to replace the nosepiece on the HANS Mobile (Jim Downing is the co-creator of the HANS device and has the HANS logo prominently displayed across the front of the car). Howard Katz filled me in on the reason. “We had some kind of shortage in the light system. It kept popping the circuit breaker so we changed that too and everything has been fine since.”

“We will be around at the end.”

And as everyone knows, you have to be around at the start before you can be around at the end. So here’s a shot of the Kudzu crew on the grid before this soon to be (?) momentous day.