Just A Car Guy: I just got a comment on a post, by a Hall Of Famer... have you heard of Judy Stropus? She literally wrote the book on the specialty of timing for teams, The Stropus Guide To Auto Race Timing And Scoring in 1975

Sunday, February 13, 2022

I just got a comment on a post, by a Hall Of Famer... have you heard of Judy Stropus? She literally wrote the book on the specialty of timing for teams, The Stropus Guide To Auto Race Timing And Scoring in 1975

If you were going to take up an activity that would cover all aspects of motorsport, what would it be? Between boats, planes, bikes, dragsters, etc. etc. one thing in common is they all are timed

Timing and scoring events crosses all boundaries, from IndyCar, NHRA to NASCAR to road racing to land speed racing, all need timing and scoring.

Her ability to sit for the entire 24 hours at Daytona and LeMans and score each car in the race for the entire time without stopping became her trademark.

When the Bud Moore Trans Am Cougars hired her, she worked with Peter Revson, Ed Leslie, and Lee Roy Yarborough

When her ability became widely known, and after the Cougar team discovered her, two years later Roger Penske asked her, “Why aren’t you working for me?”… and a 20-plus-year timing career flourished.

Judy worked for Dan Gurney, Peter Gregg, and

was timing for Roger Penske when Mark Donohue won the Indy 500 in 1972, which was before women or blacks were allowed in the garage

Mark left the Indy 500 festivities to give Judy a ride to the airport for her next assignment, timing for Peter Brock and the BRE Datsuns.

Judy competed in the Brock Yates-organized Cannonball Run in 1972, and the actress Adrienne Barbeau played a part very loosely based on her in the movie.

The shorthand she learned in high school essentially raised her profile in racing paddocks – an invaluable tool that Stropus used in timing and scoring. She would regularly amaze teams and officials, scoring as many as 30 cars a race in the 1970s and ‘80s before electronic scoring systems existed.

“Before really good computerized timing and scoring, (for) the small teams that didn’t use her services, you’d have to wait for the hourly report to come out,’’ said former IMSA GTP winning driver Tommy Kendall, who recalls the scene when his father raced in the Rolex 24 At Daytona in the 1980s.

“And the 14-hour reports, for example at Daytona, would come out close to the 15-hour mark so you had to try and figure out what happened to piece it together. You never really knew where you were unless you were one of her clients.”

Charting the entire field on each lap, Stropus was renowned for unquestioned accuracy while scoring long races where, on more than one occasion, the sanctioning bodies looked to her lap charts to correct their errors.

As demand for her timing/scoring talent grew and her burgeoning public relations career took off, she was hired by Chevrolet and BMW to lead their massive public relations efforts spanning multiple forms of racing over decades

After a long and legendary career in timing and scoring, Stropus focused on another skillset with public relations where her clientele includes BMW, Chevrolet, ABC, CBS, TNN, ESPN, Dunlop, Pirelli, Brumos Racing, Don Schumacher Racing, and countless others in a trade she continues to practice.

“One of the achievements I’m proud of is helping set up (for BMW) the Jeff Gordon and Juan Pablo Montoya ‘car swap,’ in which they drove each other’s cars on the Grand Prix circuit at Indianapolis Raceway in June of 2003. Jeff drove the Williams F1 BMW FW25 and Juan drove the NASCAR Chevrolet. They both said it was one of the highlights of their careers, and it got huge press.”

She was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2021