In 1974, Rob Dyson bought a half built Datsun 510. He asked Pat Smith, an auto mechanics teacher in Poughkeepsie NY, to help him out and decided to go racing for a year - just a year to see what it was like. Pat Smith stayed with Dyson Racing for 28 years and thirty-four years later, Dyson Racing, the premier sports car team in North America, has 61 wins and sixteen championships.

Rob Dyson: "I had always been interested in road racing. It was very interesting to see the different roster of people in the Ferraris, Maseratis, Coopers and Porsches, and later, the Ford GT and Coupes. Plus you had Formula One guys stopping by and doing races and that just added to the mystique. It struck me that the people in road racing were business men who had interests outside of racing. I followed Champ Car racing with all the guys who ran in the 50's and 60's - they were full time racers - I couldn't do what they did, but I always had in the back of my mind that I could do road racing sometime in the future. So when I finished graduate school at Cornell, I was 28 at the time, and I said, why don't I do it for a year see what it is like. I remember watching races at Watkins Glen from the roof of my car when I was younger and I said it would we neat to run Watkins Glen, to race the same track that the Formula One guys race on.

"So I decided the best way to start was to get a car that was simple to work on and get parts for. The Datsun 510 fit that bill. Datsun had a competition department and they had a bunch of parts for it. So I bought one that was half built and ran it at an SCCA regional at Watkins Glen in 1974 and ended up winning my first race."

The Beginnings

Rob Dyson had always been interested in mechanics and cars. When he was ten years old, there was a guy in the neighborhood that had '49 Mercury with glass packs and a continental kit and it left a strong impression on him. He still remembers the pin striping on it and how it looked and sounded running down the street with the muffler off and sitting low to the ground.

The hook was set when he saw his first Indy 500:

Rob Dyson: "In the summer of 1961, my father was in Indianapolis on a business trip and my mother took my brother and I out to Indianapolis to see my dad and a business associate of his said, "Come on boys, I will take you out to the Speedway." We got on one of those little busses that went around the Speedway and the guy would say "this is where Wilbur Shaw use to pit" and "this is where Roger Ward started a wreck" and you would see these big beautiful facilities and it was really something. It was like nothing I had ever seen in my life before. We went to the Speedway museum, and they had the Marmon Wasp, the Ray Harroun car, and they had the roadsters and you are seeing these cars for the first time. They had chrome exhausts, and pearl paint and mind you, for a kid coming from a farm where you had tractors and old jalopies and stuff - it was phenomenal. It was an epiphany. I said, "I want to be a part of this." The next year we went to the Indy 500 and we stayed at a downtown hotel and there was a souvenir flag stand in our room. I took it home and I still have it on my bookcase. We also have the same seats at the Speedway and we renew them every year. My dad got those seats and we use to go out there several times when I was growing up."