CITGO Fuels Latina Racer Milka Duno’s Championship Run.

CITGO launched their year-long assault on the 2004 Grand American Sports Car Series championship season with an impressive two-car effort with Howard-Boss Motorsports at Daytona, featuring accomplished sports car aces Andy Wallace, Stephan Gregoire, Doug Goad and Milka Duno – the first woman in history to pilot the series’ highest class race car – the Daytona Prototype. Joining CITGO and Howard-Boss Motorsports for the legendary twice-around-the-clock endurance classic were NASCAR superstars Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart and Robby Gordon.

Milka, Stephan, Doug and Robby shared driving duties in #09 CITGO Spirit of Daytona Pontiac Crawford, while Andy, Dale, and Tony took turns behind the wheel of the #2 CITGO Chevrolet Crawford.

“It’s nice to come to Daytona. Everybody knows this is our biggest race of the year coming up in a couple of weeks,” commented Tony. “This is sports car racing’s biggest race of the year here in the United States. It’s just an honor. We really have to thank the CITGO people a lot. They came on board at the last minute and really helped these teams out and gave them the funding they needed to really make us competitive. So we’ve got to thank CITGO and everybody at Max Crawford’s operation. They have done such a great job giving three stock car drivers that don’t have any time in these Daytona Prototypes – they made us feel very comfortable in the car – and fast,” added Tony.

Milka, an engineer by training, has four master’s degrees to her credit – in Naval Architecture, Maritime Business, Marine Biology and Organizational Development. These skills have helped her to reach the highest and fastest class of sports car racing in the world – by giving her the ability to communicate technically with the team’s engineers and mechanics, with critical regard to improving the handling and performance of the race car. Using these skills Milka has advanced to this world-class level in an amazingly short five years. Milka is the first woman in history to pilot cars in this top class and is on her way to becoming one of the preeminent female racers in the world.

But racing fans are not the only ones that have noticed her rapid rise. With her striking Venezuelan beauty and natural charisma, Milka has had the good fortune of appearing in magazines such as Cosmopolitan en Español, Maxim en Español, Selecta, Latina Magazine and Catalina Magazine – she can also soon be seen in the April, 2004 issue of Men’s Fitness Magazine.