CRAWFORD RACE CARS

Andy Scriven – Chief Designer

Andy Scriven, Chief Designer for Crawford Race Cars , knows about designing winning cars – indeed he was responsible for the Group C Nissan which won the Daytona 24 Hours, ten years ago. His cars have also won the Indianapolis 500, he was the designer of the Penske which, fitted with a Mercedes Benz pushrod engine dominated the 1994 Indy 500.

But for the expatriate Briton, now based near the Crawford team in  Sherrills Ford, North Carolina, the car that occupies all his thoughts  is the Crawford SSC2K which will race in this weekend’s Rolex 24 in the hands of Jan Lammers, Tony Stewart and Johnny Mowlem.

Says Scriven, “This project has been a lot of hard work but very enjoyable. These days in big teams like the Formula 1 outfits, the design team can number 20 people. One guy does the gearbox, another the hubs and so on. But I’ve done the majority of the car myself and, of course, that includes the changes we just made to the rear end of the car in the past three weeks.

“I love working with Max , the team is fabulous and the great majority of the car is made in house by Crawford and Crawford Composites.”

Scriven started his career in motor sports back in 1984 working for the Tiga organization where he doubled as a draftsman and van driver for the company owned by former Grand Prix racers Tim Schenken and Howden Ganley. He had less time to drive the van in 1995 as he designed the Tiga GT285 IMSA Lights car.

The young designer was soon picked up by TWR, working initially on the design of the Group C V12 engine . In 1987 he was promoted to Le Mans project engineer where he worked under Tony Southgate. The following year he was recruited by Bernie Ecclestone to design the Alfa Romeo Procar. The car was a carbon replica of an Alfa 155 road car with a 3.5 litre V10 engine mounted in the rear. But sadly the car was never raced.

Scriven moved on to Lola where he returned to Group C and was Chief Designer for the Lola-built Nissan which went on to win the Daytona 24 in 1992. 

Andy then moved to the United States to start a six-year stint with Penske which not only embraced designing the 1994 Indy 500 winner but also an extensive period with Penske South where he became one of the few non-Americans to work in NASCAR. In 1995 he was promoted to Chief Engineer for Penske South and in 1997 he headed up their development of the Ford Taurus for the Winston Cup series.

In 1998 he spent a year with the PPI CART FedEx program before joining Max Crawford in 1998 and going on to design what he hopes will be his second Daytona 24 hour winner.