Crawford Fastest in Final Practice . . .

Britain’s Johnny Mowlem recorded the fastest time in today’s final practice session for tomorrow’s Rolex 24 at Daytona. The Ascot based driver , racing a sports prototype for the first time this weekend  lapped in 1m 44.536s (122.479mph) driving the Crawford SSC2K-Judd to head the massive 79 car field.

This is the first time the Crawford company owned by New Zealanders Max and Jan Crawford and based in North Carolina have run their own car at International level. Their car has been under development for the past year and recent changes to the aerodynamics and transmission have proved most fruitful. Indeed Mowlem’s lap marks the first time the car has topped the time charts.

After the short six lap run Mowlem said, “the car felt superb and gave me a lot of confidence and the lap time just came. It’s a boost for me in my first prototype race and for the team who have worked so hard. We weren’t looking for a fast time we were simply doing a run to check out the car after our scheduled engine change this morning. But now we have to concentrate on the race.”

Both Jan Lammers and Tony Stewart also drove in the session working mainly on getting comfortable in the car for the forthcoming 24 Hours. Yesterday in official qualifying Jan Lammers placed the car third on the grid.

Despite the new success as a constructor the Crawford team know about success at Daytona.  Team owner Max Crawford, when working for Rob Dyson , has twice team managed the winning car at the 24 Hours. Crawford designer Andy Scriven  designed the Nissan that won the race 10 years ago and lead driver Jan Lammers has twice won the race for Jaguar.

Crawford Racing is a sister company of Crawford & Crawford Composites, a leading edge high technology producer of composite components and wind tunnel models.

For further information – contact Andrew Marriott in The Media Center