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BEDFORD, MA (23 August 2006) The iRacing.com team includes more than 50 years of collective experience developing award-winning motorsport simulations and more than 100 years of real-world racing experience and one member of the team is about to add to that total. Divina Galica, iRacing.com's director of partner relations and a 30-year veteran of professional racing, will be reunited with the Formula One machinery of her early career as she participates in two Historic Grand Prix events.
"In motor racing, there is no substitute for experience," said Galica, a four-time Olympian, who held the record as the fastest British woman on skis before switching over to motorsport at the age of 28. "I'm very lucky to have been able to race as much as I have; in so many different cars and on so many tracks. As thrilled as I am to be able to get back in a Grand Prix car, the idea of making that kind of experience available to everyone who finds this sport as addictive as I do, is almost more exciting almost, but not quite!"
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Galica will pilot James Hunt's 1974 Hesketh 308B at the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma at Infineon Raceway, Aug. 2528. The car, now owned by Lee Brahin and prepared by Val Burd, pre-dates Galica's involvement in F1 as she had only just started her motortsports career in '74 when, thanks to her celebrity status as an Olympic skier, she was invited to participate in an exhibition race with other sports personalities at Britain's Oulton Park circuit. Finishing second in that first race, however, it was only a short four years before Galica ascended to the top rung of road racing ladder, earning a ride in a later version of the Hesketh 308B for several races in 1978.
The car she'll race at the Zippo U.S. Vintage Grand Prix at Waktins Glen, Sept. 810, has even greater significance, both historical and personal. The 1978 Lotus 79 was Mario Andretti's World Championship-winning mount, but it was also the drive that Galica desperately wanted and nearly had 28 years ago. The Briton was on the "short list" of racers under consideration to drive alongside Andretti in the black-and-gold John Player Special/Olympus Cameras car for the second half of the 1978 season. The seat ultimately went to Frenchman Jean-Pierre Jarier, but current owner Joel Finn has offered Galica another opportunity to get behind the wheel.
For more information, please read Vintage Racecar Journal editor Casey Annis' interview with Divina Galica, which originally appeared in the June 2006 issue of VRJ. Reprints of the magazine are available at www.vintageracecar.com.
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