A Stress-free Fast Lane Larry Huang accelerated his passion for sports car racing to a new level this year — and the vehicle he's driving bears the Georgia Tech logo and the school colors. Huang, IM 73, is co-founder of Ciena Corp., an optical communications company, and serves on the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees. He endowed the Lawrence P. Huang Chair in Engineering Entrepreneurship at Georgia Tech and committed $5 million to the Huang Executive Education Center in the College of Management. The Georgia Tech car driven by Huang, a No. 39 Crawford Manufactured Daytona Prototype, made its debut at the Grand Prix of Miami at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Feb. 26 sponsored by Silverstone Racing. Huang is paired with Chris Hall, a former champion Formula Ford driver who is also the co-founder and operator of Silverstone Racing. "It was a brand new car delivered a few weeks before the Homestead race, which was the first time we actually ran the car," Huang says. "We had a good race. We finished 10th overall out of about 45 cars." Among the competitors he beat was actor and racing enthusiast Paul Newman. "We had a power steering system fail after about one-third of the race, so we drove the rest of the race without power steering, which was very, very difficult," Huang says.
Huang began racing seriously in 2000, competing in Sports Car Club of America amateur events. He successfully competed in the Ferrari Challenge Series and took the overall championship in the 2002 Panoz Racing Series. Huang drove a No. 39 Corvette in the 2003 Grand-Am Series, in which he and Hall finished third at Barber Motorsport Park. "We decided to step up to the top level of competition the Rolex series," Huang says. The Georgia Tech car will compete in the 11 races of the 2004 Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series. "We've entered into a kind of a partnership with Georgia Tech," he says. "We're using some of GT Motorsports' mechanical engineering students as part of our crew and we're using some of the business school students to help market ^ j j
the c a r '" ftk Joining Silverstone Racing as trackside engiHjl noors and members of the pit crew this season are Matt Stephens, Scott Flanagan and Kevin Bray, all members of GT Motorsports, Tech's Formula student racing team. When he's out of the car watching a race, Huang says the tremendous sense of speed "makes you stand back a little." But it's different competing in the race. "Actually, when you're in the car and you hit 190 like we did at Daytona, you don't get much sensation of speed." — John Dunn Spring 2004 'GEORGIA TECH 5 1