Florida Tech to Compete in Fireball Run to Find Missing Children: Race Begins Sept. 25

MELBOURNE, FLA.—The Chevrolet Fireball Run Aventurally: Southern Excursion road rally to find missing children starts Sept. 25 at 9:30 a.m. under the Downtown Melbourne Archway, at the corner of Strawbridge Avenue and Main Street. Among the 50 competing teams is Florida Institute of Technology in a new Corvette ZR-1 driven by College of Aeronautics dean and former astronaut Winston Scott and Assistant Vice President of Marketing Jennifer Neuhard. The public is invited to this car show Green Flag Event.

“I can’t think of a more worthy cause than finding missing children. Our team will publicize the effort to recover eight-year-old Journey Everitt and her younger brother Trust. We will distribute thousands of posters over the 2,500-mile trip, hoping to find anyone who has seen them,” said Dean Scott.

Other teams will compete in such cars as Bumble Bee, from the Transformers movies; a customized 2010 Chevrolet Camaro 2LT; and the Mayberry Cruiser, a ’65 Ford Galaxie 500 Police Interceptor 390, which began life on the Andy Griffith show and was last used in the Tom Hanks film Catch Me If You Can. Another celebrity car to watch for is Fueled By The Fallen, a memorial race car driven to support past and present members of the military and public safety personnel and their families. Also look for Lamborghinis, more Camaros and the time car from Back to the Future.

The event encourages the public to come out, get autographs and show their support for finding missing children.

The road rally will take participants eight days, as they stop along the way driving to the end point, Gulfport, Miss. Teams will play a “mission-style” game, developed from points of interest in 15 host destinations.

Teams will use clues to accomplish their missions, earning points. “It will take more brain power than horsepower to successfully navigate the country in this part rally, part game, part race,” said Neuhard. “Participants logging onto the blog page can ‘like’ our car and follow us along the rally—even help us make sense of the clues!”

Motorsports challenges are also incorporated into game play, such as wet skid challenges and drag strip events.