Audrey Zavodsky

courtesy of Thunder Valley Racing

Panoz Racing Series Driver

Audrey Zavodsky, Ph.D., begins her 3rd season of racing under the Visteon banner. This year will be her 5th year of racing competition. Audrey has a list of successes in racing that include the inaugural win in the Women's Global GT series and 2 out of 3 first place finishes in the last 3 years in the SCCA's area 4 Central Division.

Audrey has flown a F-16 fighter jet with the United States Air Force Thunderbirds. Audrey maintains her contacts with the world famous Thunderbirds. She uses this connection to keep her many interactions with high school children groups current. Audrey encourages the students to look at the Air Force for career opportunities as well as pointing out that they are a source of American pride.

Audrey is participating in the Panoz Racing Series that is an outgrowth of the Panoz Racing School and WGGT series. This series will have within it 2 distinct racing groups. They are the Panoz GT and Panoz GT Pro series. The overall series will consist of an 8-race schedule. The Panoz GT Pro series will have 3 races that are conducted along with the American Le Mans schedule. This series will feature the Panoz GT and Panoz GTS racecars.

Audrey's reputation is that she races "clean" and is a consistent fast driver. As testimony to this Audrey holds track records in the Panoz GT car at the Laguna Seca and Road Atlanta race tracks. She has made many friends in the racing community as a result of her skills on and off the race track. Cindi Lux, Divina Galica, Belinda Endress, Sascha Maasen, Dick Barbour, Scott Bove, and Sonja Bayer are amongst her many racing friends.

Audrey shares her experiences with children of all ages. It is not unusual to see Audrey visiting schools, hospitals, youth homes, and businesses as she spreads her enthusiastic message to stay in school, eat and live right, stay off of drugs, set goals, and live your dream. Audrey has been invited as a motivational speaker to speak at colleges, 1000 cheerleaders at the NFL Spirit Week, to resident engineers, Kids on Track, civic groups, corporations, and many other groups.

She also works closely with car focus groups to help bring new ideas and driving experiences into the mix. She evaluates vehicle systems from a performance perspective that translates to best in class characteristics. This is accomplished as she applies her racing and consumer experience to test the various product features. Her ability to communicate helps the engineers to build products that achieve market excellence.

Racing and Visteon go hand-in-hand with Audrey's success on and off the race track. She has the position of Corporate Nurse at Ford Motor Company with the responsibility of several of their plants in various locations. She believes that employees are the lifeblood of the company and that they deserve the very best in medical care.

Audrey has driven several different brands of vehicles including BMW's, Toyotas, Datsuns, Mazda RX-7's, Mazda Spec Racers, Mustang Cobra's, Mustang GT's, CART 101, NASCAR, Dodge open wheelers, Spec Racer Ford's, and others. She has her sights set on Trans-am and CART as future areas to race in.

Audrey Zavodsky is the June 2001 Driver of the Month in Distant Thunder, the online newsletter of Thunder Valley Racing. 

Thunder Valley Racing is an automobile racing management and marketing company created to develop women race car drivers. They believe there is an untapped market and innovative marketing strategies that are available to sponsors who support women race car drivers. Here at racerchicks.com we applaud them for the great work they do and we encourage our readers to view www.thunval.com,  the best site for racerchicks across the globe.

 This article is re-printed with permission.