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Veteran race engineer with family NASCAR ties sustains brain tumor

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Catherine Crawford, who is the senior race engineer for Panoz DeltaWing Racing in the NASCAR-owned IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, has had emergency surgery after sustaining a brain tumor.

The Crawford family has enjoyed a long career in motorsports in the composites business.

According to its website, Crawford Composites has done work with teams in several different race series, including several NASCAR Sprint Cup and Xfinity Series outfits.

The Crawford name has also been heavily involved in NASCAR’s sports car racing divisions, either in the GRAND-AM Rolex Series with the Crawford DP03 Daytona Prototype chassis in the mid-2000s, or more recently in the WeatherTech Championship where Crawford has served as race engineer since Long Beach last season.

The Crawford family released this statement:

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On Tuesday, March 29, 2016, our daughter Catherine, Engineering Manager at Crawford Composites and Lead Engineer at DeltaWing Racing, underwent emergency surgery in Rome, Italy for a brain tumor.

Catherine and her husband Russ were on a business-pleasure trip to Italy when she suffered a severe headache and more serious symptoms were immediately evident. The surgeons have praised Russ for his swift action in getting Catherine to hospital – something that positively affected the outcome.

Our family is here in Rome at present supporting Russ and Catherine. We acknowledge that the road to recovery will be a long one but the surgeons are encouraged by the progress Catherine has displayed already.

We want to thank all who have expressed their support and love and at this time we respectfully request privacy.

Sincerely,

Max and Jan Crawford

Crawford Composites

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More information, including a number of well wishes from those in the sports car paddock where the DeltaWing team races, can be found here via MotorSportsTalk.

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