A memorial service for Davey Evans

A memorial service will be held this Sunday, October 12 in his hometown, Sunbury-on-Thames, for longtime Newman/Haas/Lanigan crewman Davey Evans who was killed in Indianapolis last May. The service will take place at two o’clock Sunday afternoon at St. Mary’s Parish Church on Church Street and any friends or colleagues of Davey are welcome to attend.

Evans, 63, was Carl Haas’s longest-serving employee. He first worked on Peter Revson’s and Jackie Stewart’s Lola Can-Am cars for Haas’s team in 1970 and ‘71 and was one of four men who ran Brian Redman’s championship-winning Haas/Hall Formula 5000 Lolas from 1973-’76. He also worked on Haas’s ‘new era’ Can-Am team from 1977-’79 when the team won three of its four Can-Am championships.

Davey was born in Sunbury-on-Thames and started his working life in 1959 when he was fifteen years old as an apprentice mechanic at HWM Motors in nearby Walton-on-Thames. He joined Maranello Concessionaires, the UK’s Ferrari dealer, a few years later, then moved to Lola Cars. Davey worked on many different Lolas before coming to America with Haas’s Can-Am and Formula 5000 cars.

For many years he worked at Lola during the winters building Haas’s cars. Evans was an old-school artisan who could construct almost anything. He was not only Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing’s most experienced crewman, but probably the longest-serving man in the contemporary Indy car garage area.

Following Davey’s death a small note of recognition was added for the rest of the season to the cockpit sides of Justin Wilson’s and Graham Rahal’s Newman/Haas/Lanigan Indy cars. ‘In Loving Memory of Davey Evans’ said the simple epitaph.

I had the pleasure of calling Davey Evans a friend for more than thirty years. I met Davey at Riverside in 1973 at the first race I covered as Autosport’s American editor. He was working on the Haas/Hall Formula 5000 team and it’s as if he was always there over the years in F5000, Can-Am, CART and Champ Car. I covered more than five hundred races where Davey was a part of the scene, working hard but with a smile and a joke, and an interesting or funny story or two to tell. I’m sure he’ll be remembered that way by all his friends and family at St. Mary’s Church on Sunday afternoon.