Jim Downing

The HANS system co-developed by Downing

An Argo JM19, here the car of Brent O'Neill and Jan Thoelke at the ISMA-GTP-Miami-Grand-Prix 1987, was Jim Downing's emergency vehicle in the IMSA-GTP series in the mid-1980s

James "Jim" Downing (born January 4, 1942 in Atlanta , Georgia ) is a former American automobile racing driver , racing team owner, designer and one of the developers of the HANS system .

The HANS system

Jim Downing is considered to be the forefather of the HANS system ( acronym for Head and Neck Support ). The system protects racing drivers from severe injuries in the head, neck and neck area in the event of an accident. The development was triggered in the early 1980s by several serious accidents in US sports car racing. The last impetus to initiate the implementation was the fatal accident of the Frenchman Patrick Jacquemart in 1981. Jacquemart was at that time managing director of Renault Motorsport in the United States and also active as a racing driver. He had an accident with a Renault 5 Turbo on a private test drive at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course and died of severe neck injuries. Downing turned to his brother-in-law, Dr. Robert Hubbard, a bio-medic who worked for General Motors in accident research in addition to his work at Michigan State University . Hubbard ultimately developed the innovative system that Downing was the first racing driver to wear from the late 1980s to the end of his career.

Career in motorsport

Downing, like his brother-in-law, had a college degree before embarking on his professional racing career. He received his PhD in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology . Downing grew up in an automotive environment. His father ran a dealership in Japanese vehicles, including Mazda cars, in his hometown . He contested his first amateur race at the age of eleven, and by the age of sixteen was already a local automobile slalom star .

He began professionally in motorsport in the mid-1970s. He quickly acquired the reputation of a fast, but also careful and technically savvy driver. Downing is one of the racing drivers with the highest arrival rates in US sports car racing. He was able to finish 84% of his racing starts or was classified. That is 222 target arrivals with 275 reports. Hardly any driver can show such a quota.

Downing was supported financially and structurally by Mazda in particular during his career, so it is not surprising that most of the racing vehicles he used were Mazda racing cars with rotary engines ; including the racing models of the RX-2 , RX-3 and RX-7 . In his driving career spanning almost five decades, he won two races. In 1978 he won the the World Sportscar Championship scoring 6-hour race at Daytona . His partner in the Mazda RX-2 was later for drug offenses to life long imprisonment sentenced John Paul senior . In 1982 he won just before Butch Leitzinger at the IMSA GTP race in Mid-Ohio. Downing ended his professional driving career after the 2003 Petit Le Mans . Once he has relapsed; the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2011 he drove a Mazda RX-8 .

In 1985 , 1986 and 1987 he secured the overall ranking of the GTP Lights Class IMSA GTP series .

Kudzu Cars

Downing had his own racing team in the 1990s and was already involved in the development of Argo Racing Cars . In 1989 the company began building its own racing cars, initially based on an Argo JM19 with a Mazda rotary engine. Later followed completely separate structures with Buick - V6 engine . Downing's wife, Connie, came up with the idea for the name Kudzu Cars , referring to the Japanese plant species kudzu . Until 2002, the various Kudzu prototypes were successfully used in sports car races.

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1995	DTR with Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DG-3	Franck Fréon	Yōjirō Terada	Rank 7
1996	Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DLM	Franck Fréon	Yōjirō Terada	Rank 25 and class win
1997	DTR with Mazdaspeed	Kudzu DLM4	Franck Fréon	Yōjirō Terada	Rank 17
2002	Autoexe Motorsport	Autoexe LMP-02	John Fergus	Yōjirō Terada	failure	Gearbox damage

Sebring results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1978	Faza Squadra	Mazda RX-3	Al Cosentino		Rank 31st
1979	Roger Mandeville	Mazda RX-7	Amos Johnson	Roger Mandeville	Rank 13
1980	Mandeville Racing	Mazda RX-7	Brad Frisselle	Roger Mandeville	9th place and class win
1981	Downing Maffucci Racing	Mazda RX-7	Irv Hoerr	Scott Hoerr	Rank 15
1982	Jim Downing	Mazda RX-7	John Maffucci	Tom Waugh	Rank 13
1983	RGP 500 Racing	Mazda RX-7	John Maffucci	Chuck Ulinski	Rank 17
1984	RGP 500 Racing	Argo JM16	John Maffucci		failure	Lathe operator
1985	Jim Downing	Argo JM16B	John Maffucci		5th place and class win
1986	Certified Brakes Racing	Argo JM19	John Maffucci	John O'Steen	Rank 9
1987	Jim Downing	Argo JM19	John Maffucci	John O'Steen	Rank 14
1988	Jim Downing	Argo JM19	Howard Katz	Hiro Matsushita	failure	Motor overheated
1989	Downing Atlanta	Argo JM19	Howard Katz	John O'Steen	Rank 23
1990	Downing Atlanta	Mazda RX-7	Amos Johnson	John O'Steen	failure	differential
1992	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DG-1	Howard Katz	Tim McAdam	5th place and class win
1993	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DG-1	Howard Katz	Tim McAdam	Rank 13
1994	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DG-3	Wayne Taylor	Tim McAdam	Rank 3
1995	Downing Atlanta Racing	Kudzu DG-3	Jim Pace	Butch Hamlet	Rank 3
1996	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DLM	Barry Waddell	Butch Hamlet	Rank 4
1997	Downing Atlanta Racing	Kudzu DLM	Charlie Nearburg	Tim McAdam	Rank 4
1998	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DLM	Jim Pace	Yōjirō Terada	failure	Engine failure
1999	Downing Atlanta	Kudzu DLY	Chris Ronson	Steve Pelke	Rank 12
2002	Autoexe Motorsport	Autoexe LMP-02	John Fergus	Yōjirō Terada	Rank 25

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	10	11	12	13	14th	15th	16	17th
1978	Mazda Auto Faza Squadra Al Cosentino Jim Downing	Mazda RX-3	DAY	SEB	MUG	VALLEY	DIJ	SIL	ONLY	LEM	MIS	DAY	WAT	VAL	ROD
			29	31		DNF						1			3
1979	Roger Mandeville Jim Downing	Mazda RX-7 Mazda RX-2	DAY	SEB	MUG	VALLEY	DIJ	RIV	SIL	ONLY	LEM	BY	DAY	WAT	SPA	BRH	ROA	VAL	ELS
				13		DNF		14th					DNF
1980	Roger Mandeville Racing Beat Jim Downing	Mazda RX-7 Mazda RX-3	DAY	BRH	SEB	MUG	MON	RIV	SIL	ONLY	LEM	DAY	WAT	SPA	MOS	ROA	VAL	DIJ
			8th		9			DNF				9			DNF
1981	Downing Maffucci Racing	Mazda RX-7 Mazda RX-3	DAY	SEB	MUG	MON	RIV	SIL	ONLY	LEM	BY	DAY	WAT	SPA	MOS	ROA	BRH
			11	15th			19th					2				20th

literature

• Ken Breslauer: Sebring. The official History of America's Great Sports Car Race. David Bull, Cambridge MA 1995, ISBN 0-9649722-0-4 .
• Peter Higham: The Guinness Guide to International Motor Racing. A complete Reference from Formula 1 to Touring Car. Guinness Publishing Ltd., London 1995, ISBN 0-85112-642-1 .

Web links

Commons : Jim Downing  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Jim Downing, Argo and Kudzu
• Jim Downing at Racing Sports Cars
• Jim Downing and the HANS system

Individual evidence

1. ^ Patrick Jacquemart at Motorsport Memorial
2. ↑ Jim Downing with his original HANS system ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ 1978 Daytona 6 Hours
4. ^ IMSA-Mid-Ohio 1982