{"id":60837,"date":"2019-03-22T11:27:51","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T18:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=60837"},"modified":"2019-03-22T13:04:50","modified_gmt":"2019-03-22T20:04:50","slug":"versatile-chris-dyson-going-silver-crown-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/versatile-chris-dyson-going-silver-crown-racing\/","title":{"rendered":"Versatile Chris Dyson Going Silver Crown Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Versatile
Image courtesy Trans Am<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Chris Dyson is no one-trick-pony. Born into a racing family (his father, Rob, was a regular on the IMSA trail), Chris began his competitive career racing dirt go-karts. He\u2019s been a champion in the American Le Mans Series (ALMS), run the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times and has the kind of stellar road racing resume others strive to achieve.<\/p>\n

Still, Chris Dyson wants more. Last year he began his Trans Am career and quickly took to the muscle-car competition. But even before that the lanky Dyson began a transition to USAC, driving sprint cars and midgets on dirt. He\u2019s worked hard to develop those skills and is ready to apply them to pavement.<\/p>\n

Now 41, he has an appointment with USAC Silver Crown pavement competition, set to take place at Memphis International Raceway at noon on Friday, March 22. That\u2019s when the opening practice for USAC\u2019s Silver Crown Champ Car Series season starting event begins and when Dyson is set to take his first laps in CD Racing\u2019s new blue, white and black Thetford\/ProtectAll Beast racecar.<\/p>\n

\"Versatile<\/p>\n

The Memphis 100 marks CD Racing\u2019s first pavement race, following a 2018 dirt-only campaign where Dyson posted results of 16th, 13th and 13th in his first three races. The team intends to compete in the full, 12-race Silver Crown season.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really enjoyed running the dirt races last year when my other racing commitments permitted,\u201d Dyson said. \u201cWe made good progress over the course of the season, so it made sense to add the pavement races to our 2019 schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dyson\u2019s Silver Crown dirt\/pavement schedule has only two conflicts with his Trans Am commitments and he believes there may be a solution in both cases. Technical rules for pavement and dirt Silver Crown cars are quite similar, yet the demands for racing on the two surfaces mean that, other than engines, there are essentially no interchangeable components between the two car types.<\/p>\n

CD Racing hired Sean Michael to prepare and field the CD Racing Silver Crown champ car, sprint car and midgets. The crew chief\u2019s two assistants have spent a total of about 1,000 hours over the past three weeks assembling and preparing the No. 9 pavement car. The prep work ensued after the team\u2019s appearance at the USAC National Sprint Car season-opening Winter Dirt Games X in Florida.<\/p>\n

\"Versatile
Image courtesy Trans Am<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Silver Crown racing hasn\u2019t had its customary following for the past few years, making it difficult for CD Racing to find parts for the build.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe parts aren\u2019t as readily accessible for a Silver Crown car as they are for sprint cars,\u201d Sam Michael admitted. \u201cThe situation is getting better as the series gets stronger, but it\u2019s still more work than for a sprint car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe engine is mounted much lower in the pavement car chassis, so it has a shallower oil pan,\u201d he continued. \u201cWe ran a pavement engine bought from Tony Stewart Racing in our dirt car last year. That engine will be in the pavement car at Memphis; we bought another engine from Tony for the dirt car and that has the deeper oil pan.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Dyson\u2019s team preps his new pavement car, the versatile owner\/driver is speaking up about the differences he is expecting between the sprint car and Silver Crown machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe cornering forces are bigger on pavement, which is something I\u2019m used to,\u201d Dyson said. \u201cOtherwise it will be interesting to see the similarities and differences in setting up the pavement car versus the dirt car. I\u2019m eager to get out and run with some of the experienced guys and learn as much as possible. Fortunately there\u2019s an open practice session Friday afternoon, so we\u2019ll have the opportunity to shake down this brand-new car and work on setup before we go racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Dyson and CD Racing are looking forward to making strides between Friday\u2019s open session and Saturday\u2019s practice and qualifying in preparation for the Memphis 100 race. The Silver Crown cars have always intrigued Dyson.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love oval racing and one of the central appeals of Silver Crown racing is the races are long. You have to look after the car and track changing. I think that all of those things line up with the disciplines that I\u2019ve done in road racing,\u201d Dyson said. \u201cAlthough it\u2019s certainly a different circuit configuration, you\u2019re using the same skill set.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Versatile
Image courtesy Adam Mollenkopf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Dyson is no one-trick-pony.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":60839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,3470,3699,5029],"tags":[5614,6716,1606,2820,41,1632,6715,113,2031],"class_list":["post-60837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dirt-track-racing","category-news","category-other-racing","category-racing","tag-anne-proffit","tag-chris-dyson","tag-midget-racing","tag-muscle-cars","tag-news","tag-racing","tag-silver-crown","tag-trans-am","tag-trans-am-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Chris-Dyson-photo-by-Adam-Mollenkopf-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-fPf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60846,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60837\/revisions\/60846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}