Crawford Race Cars

Max Crawford – Team Owner

Max Crawford may describe himself as “a farm boy from New Zealand” but in the 22 years since he arrived in the USA he has certainly made his mark on US motor sports  - first as a mechanic, as a team manager , as a manufacturer of components and now as a racing car constructor in his own right.

Based in Denver, North Carolina, the company he founded in 1988 and runs with wife Jan  - another New Zealander – provides structural autoclaved composite laminates which range from wing end plates to complete chassis. Indeed Crawford & Crawford Composites was the first non-aerospace US company to produce a full composite chassis, the Mazda RX7-92P.

These days the company services many different aspects of US auto racing but increasingly NASCAR and while composite materials are largely banned in Busch Grand National and Winston Cup, the wind tunnel models for the various  cars can be made from composites and Crawford have worked on several such projects including the current  Ford Taurus.

But Max has always been a racer and for five years from 1995 – 2000 served as Crew Chief for long time customer Dyson Racing in selected races which included the team’s victories in the Rolex 24 in  1997 and 1999. But building his own car to win at Daytona has long been a dream for Max. Last year saw a Crawford race for the first and for 2002 Crawford will run the car himself as a full in-house factory effort for the first time.

Not that running his own team is anything new for Max. From 1965 to 1979, Crawford built and drove a variety of specials in hill climbs and later the New Zealand Open Saloon Car Championship. Wife Jan also raced in Max’s cars, one of the first women to do so in NZ. For seven years he was also the owner of Max Crawford Motors.

But the wider world beckoned and for 1980 together with  Jan, he set sail for the US and joined Dick Barbour Racing as a mechanic. Success was to come quickly because that year the team’s Porsche 935s won the IMSA Championship that year..

Then following year he joined British racer John Fitzpatrick’s US based team as Chief Mechanic in IMSA and Group C working on the team’s highly successful Porsche 935s, 956s,962s and re-engineering the Porsche K4. In1983 for Fitzpatrick, Max established an in-house composite shop, a huge innovation for a private team.

The lessons learned helped Max establish Max Crawford Composites in 1988 and within a couple of years could name Mazda and Dyson Racing amongst his growing list of customers. By 1990 he began the construction of wind tunnel models which has grown to be a very important part of the business.

In 1996 Max Crawford Composites became Crawford and Crawford Composites Inc and two years later the sister company Crawford Race Cars LLC was established with the view to becoming a constructor. The first car was sold to Doran-Lista Racing at the end of 2000 and made its debut in last year’s Rolex 24.