 CHRIS DYSON
Today’s successful drivers are known for their blending of mental and physical abilities. Chris Dyson is one of today’s renaissance racers. He is articulate and erudite, able to converse on a wide range of subjects. As an athlete, he was all county baseball, lettered in basketball and baseball and is more than proficient on the golf course. Chris completes the package with a focused commitment both in and out of the car.
In addition to co-driving the #16 BP Dyson Racing Mazda coupe, Chris is the Vice President and Sporting Director of Dyson Racing. He has overseen the ongoing growth of the team, culminating in the 2009 multi-year partnership with Mazda to campaign two new Lola LMP2 coupes powered by 2.0 liter turbo Mazda MZR-R engines in the American Le Mans Series.
The ALMS leader in consecutive starts at sixty-seven, Chris finished fourth in the 2009 ALMS LMP2 driver standings. He gave up the third spot in the championship when the #16 car successfully tested BP’s new biofuel blend with biobutanol at the Petit Le Mans and the season ending race at Mazda Raceway and was thus ineligible for points. The Petit Le Mans was one of the highlights for the #16 car, coming in seven laps ahead of the #20 class winning entry. Chris also competed in the 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans, finishing sixth in class in the #25 RML AD Group LMP2 Mazda Lola coupe.
In 2008, Chris and his teammate, Guy Smith, drove their Porsche RS Spyder to sixth in the LMP2 driver’s championship, starting off the year with a class third in the 12 Hours of Sebring and finished the year with eight top six finishes.
In 2007, Chris and Guy were fourth in the LMP2 standings, four points behind Dyson drivers Butch Leitzinger and Andy Wallace and in 2006, he had three podiums and six top fives in ten races for sixth in the LMP1 championship.
Chris finished second in the ALMS LMP1 championship in 2005 with six seconds and a third in ten races, including a run of five of six podiums in the season’s last half. In 2004, he garnered six of nine podiums in LMP1, for fourth in the standings. In sixty-seven ALMS starts, Chris has twenty-nine podiums to his credit.
Chris also drove a Dome-Judd at the 2004 24 Hours of Le Mans with reigning FIA Sportscar champion Jan Lammers, finishing seventh, the highest placed American. The same year, he drove the Zytek 043 prototype sports car to 4th in the Le Mans Endurance Series race at Silverstone, England. In 2003, he made his Toyota Atlantic debut at Portland. Chris also won his first championship in 2003. In his first full year in the series, he won the 2003 ALMS LMP2 championship with four wins including the class win at The 12 Hours of Sebring. Chris won five races in the Rolex Grand-Am Series in 2002, missing the championship by two points.
“I have so many great childhood memories of racing,” Chris says. “When I was small, I used to wake up from naps to the sounds of Pat Smith and my dad checking the timing of my dad’s Datsun 200SX.” From there to being a championship caliber driver and running the premier sports car team in North America – not a bad story – and one with many chapters still to be written.
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