The 2019 Great Race... John Hudson

Winning the Great Race does not happen overnight, it literally takes years and years of practice so most everything you do becomes second nature, you don't have to think about what to do, you automatically do it. In the 2019 race John Hudson and his son Greg drove John's 1940 Chevy coupe in the Great Race. John is an excellent mechanic who ran an auto repair garage in Baldwinsville New York for forty years.  His son is now running that garage, so both are excellent mechanics.

John has been helping Howard Sharp for close to thirty years work on the cars he has entered in the Great Race. Howard started out in the Great Race with a 1929 Dodge Sport Roadster one of only 1200 made. Howard was my second Great Race customer in 1990 after he watched Bud Melby and his 1936 Cord go thru the entire race and not change out a battery the entire race.

Howard, like most entrants in those early days swapped batteries at noon each day, the charging systems on the antique vehicles simply couldn't keep up with the electrical load. In the early days... the rule was the cars entered had to be 1945 and older. Today they can be as new as 1965.

I grew up driving Chevrolet pickups and owned and fixed up close to 50 of those during my high school years (which is how I came to invent the 6-volt alternator) so  knew all of their weak spots. John is an old Chevrolet man at heart so we immediately hit it off.

About five years ago John decided he wanted to try his hand at the Great Race. He knew he could make his Chevrolet reliable enough for the task and with a few parts from Fifth Avenue he was in business. He employed his Grandson Scott to be the navigator who was very good at math and they did well. Scott newly married, and a new job didn't have the time to compete in the 2019 race so John's son Greg stepped up and served as navigator for the 2019 Race.

Car 60 finished 27th out of 125 cars which is a very good showing especially with a new navigator. The navigation is very mentally challenging and it takes about ten years to learn it well but John's son picked it up pretty quickly. I was happy to sponsor John and his son in part because I can relate to his Stovebolt Chevrolet roots. We also had a long working relationship with the cars Howard owns.

Made it all the way to the finish line!

Over the pass in Oregon saw the temperature drop to 28 degrees

Who wouldn't be proud to own this Chevrolet...?

John Hudson the driver and his son Greg the navigator...

By now you know what the clock, speedo, and lap board is for...

Check out this optional accessory steering wheel. It is the only one I have ever seen. It is a very rare factory accessory.

Yes those are Ace awards for a perfect score on a leg, which is the distance between two check points. Wide whites...it doesn't get any better than that!