After making his NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series debut at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in 2022, Stephen Mallozzi ran double duty for the first time in his career at his home track of Pocono Raceway on July 12-13, running the Truck race for Reaume Brothers Racing and the Xfinity Series race for Joey Gase Motorsports.
Frontstretch chatted with Mallozzi before the start of the Pocono Truck race on July 12, where he shed light on the upcoming race weekend, his future plans and the long and winding road he’s faced to reach NASCAR’s highest divisions.
Like many kids of elementary school age, Mallozzi’s racing dreams were first sparked by go karts and video games.
“A lot of my racing memories happened with my old man,” Mallozzi said. “Grew up go karting. When I was nine years old, I won a championship on NASCAR Thunder 2004 and told [my dad], ‘I just won the championship, I think I’d be pretty good at this in real life.’ He was kind of like, ‘that’s not how it works.’ But then we found a local rental go kart track and did that for a few years.
“We loved it. We then did competitive go karts. And for those of you who don’t know what competitive go karts are like, they’re crazy. They’re like, three inches off the ground, they’ll do 90 mph. There are no seat belts like F1-style go karts. I won a national championship doing that.”
After experiencing that early success, Mallozzi’s racing career came to an abrupt halt during high school, as he elected to put his racing career on hold after his father was diagnosed with cancer.
“When I was about 16, Dad got sick, and I retired for about five years,” Mallozzi said.
“… It was a double whammy, right? Because my dad was my best friend, and he’s still around. But the thing I would use to deal with something like that happening would have been racing, and I lost racing while I was in this fight with my dad and his life and what was going to happen there. I was in a really, really dark place for a long time, and it was super difficult to find my way out of it.”
But it was through his dad’s courage that Mallozzi found the motivation to start racing again.
“Dad was still around five years later, fighting the battle of his life, and [that] kind of inspired me to go back to racing,” Mallozzi said. “So I moved to Charlotte, got a job with the guys at Reaume Brothers Racing and the…
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