FW: rob dyson
Casey
-----Original Message-----
From: Glenda Gephart
[mailto:gle...@racingarchives.org]
Sent: Monday, November 24, 2008
4:43 PM
To: Glenda Gephart
Subject: rob dyson
Rob Dyson Looks at 25 Years of Professional Racing
(for immediate release, Nov. 24, 2008)
WATKINS GLEN, NY – Rob Dyson will bring his celebration of 25 years in professional racing to the International Motor Racing Research Center in Watkins Glen on Saturday, Dec. 13.
Dyson will be joined at the podium by his son, Chris, for the 1 p.m. talk. The talk is part of the monthly Center Conversations series. It is free and open to all. The Center is located at 610 S. Decatur St.
The day’s activities will include the selection of the winner of the Center’s 2008 raffle of a Cobra Replicar. Raffle tickets will continue to be sold right up to the drawing at noon.
Dyson began his racing career in SCCA club racing in 1974, establishing Dyson Racing in 1983. Based in Poughkeepsie, NY, Dyson Racing is one of the longest-running and most successful private racing organizations in the United States. Over the years, Dyson Racing has competed in IMSA GTO and GTP, SCCA, Trans-Am, Grand-Am and CART.
Dyson Racing has earned 17 championships, 61 wins, 56 poles and 156 podiums during in its 25 years in sports car racing.
“I think the biggest thing I take away from the past 25 years is that you’ve got to keep working at it and eventually with the right talent and the right bunch of guys behind you, you can succeed in this sport,” Dyson told a reporter earlier this year.
“It takes a lot of effort and a lot of heart. Racing is a very emotionally and physically demanding sport. It’s the type of sport that demands so much of you that you just have to step up to it. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned over the years.”
The team currently competes in the LMP2 class of the American LeMans Series with Porsche RS Spyders. Drivers are Chris Dyson, Butch Leitzinger, Guy Smith and Marino Franchitti.
Chris Dyson and Smith finished in fifth-place in the ALMS season-ender Oct. 18 in the Monterey Sports Car Championship at Laguna Seca in Monterey, CA. Leitzinger and Franchitti finished sixth.
The team finished the season third in the P2 championship. Franchitti and Leitzinger were fifth in drivers points, followed by Chris Dyson and Smith in sixth. Porsche won both the engine and chassis manufacturer championships, the latter by one point. Dyson Racing’s points made both those championships possible.
Rob Dyson is a member of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management Hall of Honor at Cornell University, where he earned an MBA in 1974.
###
For more information: Mark Steigerwald, Center Director of Archives & Administration, (607) 535-9044; ma...@racingarchives.org.