Interview with Anthony Campi Racing: Elite Driver Development Program

The Iconic Anthony Campi Racing #81 - here driven by Katie Hettinger

February 18th, 2024

Introduction

In the adrenaline-charged world of Pro & Super Late Model racing, a few names resonate with unmistakable prominence. Among these, Anthony Campi Racing (ACR) stands out, not just for its remarkable success on the track but also for its pivotal role in shaping the future stars of racing. Competing neck and neck with the likes of Donnie Wilson Motorsports, ACR has carved a role in the racing world that deserves a closer look.

Driver Development

Anthony Campi Racing is a crucible from which racing talent is forged. With a keen eye for emerging young talent who are drawn towards ACR, and an attractive destination for seasoned veterans, ACR has become synonymous with excellence in driver development. The team's recent success with veterans Stephen Nasse, Casey Roderick, and William Byron, paired with taking on drivers like Giovanni Ruggiero and Sammy Smith as they entered the Late Model ranks, underscore the team’s versatility and commitment to excellence, irrespective of a driver's prior laurels.

The ACR Approach

At the heart of ACR's philosophy is a commitment to nurturing talent from the ground up. In this interview, Anthony Campi himself explains how the team focuses on developing drivers from various entry-level racing disciplines, including Go Karts and Legend cars. The process isn't just about finding drivers with potential; it's a meticulous method of aligning goals, assessing financial backing, and ensuring that both team and driver are on the same page. This approach has not only helped ACR in selecting the right talent but also in ensuring that each driver's journey with the team is as fruitful as possible. ACR's ability to adapt to the needs of both young rookies and established/top drivers speaks to the flexible and dynamic approach. Working with veterans like Byron, Nasse, and Roderick has brought a different dimension to the team, bringing with it unique challenges and benefits.

ACR's On Track Success

Tracing the trajectory of ACR's success, one cannot miss the significant milestones and achievements that have marked its journey. Giovanni Bromante had remarkable debut, which will be touched on in the interview portion, Chase Purdy won the prestigious Snowflake 100, and in 2019 a 15 year old Sammy Smith made 8 starts for ACR, including 3 wins, 8 top-5s, and winning the Pro Late Model division at the New Smyrna Speedway World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing championship. On the veteran side, William Byron has 2nd place finishes in both of his 2023 ASA Stars National Tour starts, and wins in both World Series at New Smyrna Super Late Model starts, including the Clyde Hart Memorial. Stephen Nasse joined the team for what was expected as a one-off race near the end of 2023, in what ended up being a victory in a Blizzard Series race at Five Flags Speedway, Florida. He would quickly follow this up with a podium finish at the Winchester 400, and his first victory in the Florida Governor’s Cup. This is just a sample of the success that the team has had - if you see an ACR car on an entry list, they are always worth watching.

Interview

I think it's safe to say that the two best teams in Super Late Model racing right now are Donnie Wilson Motor Sports, and Anthony Campi Racing. Your team plays a big role in driver development, but it also plays host to established Super Late Model stars sometimes. Right now, for example, Stephen Nasse has been doing amazing in ACR equipment. Last year, William Byron did the same. I see it is stated that you don't just rent racecars, but that there is a lot of concerted effort involved.

Can you walk me through the process, a bit? We don't need to discuss the financials, but I'm curious about the process. Does the team sometimes reach out to drivers that they have scouted? And what if I were a racer, and I was asking for an opportunity. What are the types of things you would be looking at?

The basis of our own business has been developed on the aspect of bringing younger kids up through, and developing them from a blank sheet of paper, I guess you could say, from a stock car racing perspective. How we've built this up in the last decade as you know, is kids either running Go Karts, or Quarter Midgets, or Pro Trucks. Or a really popular one we've had a lot of is Legend cars. And the next progression most of the time, is to another series in something in the Pro Late Model or something in the Stock Car ranks. They'll inquire and reach out to us, and we go through the list of things like where they've been, where they're looking to go, what their goals are. Financial backing plays a big role, whether through sponsors, or self-funded through the family. We take our best judgment and pick one or two drivers, take them to a few test sessions at certain tracks, and make sure we're all on the same page as far as what we expect from the driver, and what the driver and family expect from the team. We make sure everything gels, and will be successful down the road - that the kid develops the skills needed.

That's been the basis and business model - and as the years have progressed and we've gotten more grounded in the sport, and we've had a lot of kids that a lot of people have never heard over, over a year span, start to run with the late model elites. That's what spiked a lot of interest in the last couple of years, with already established drivers coming to us. They say 'well man, we've done this for a long time, and we have these kids popping in and out of here as they're on their way to NASCAR, that are running with us, or competing with us, or beating us on occasion’. I think that's where some of the veteran aspect has come into play as of late. It works great both ways, everything we do is built around development, but when we take a person like William Byron or Stephen Nasse or Casey Roderick, it's still all the same struggles. You've got to get the feel they want, get them the car they need, and it can be just as difficult in it's own manner. They bring a lot of experience, and race craft, but to get the exact feel they need to accomplish that.

A lot of times when you get a kid who doesn't have much experience, who you can mould and craft from scratch, we can teach them over time to be just as easy to race with as an established veteran who is set in their ways, that we have to work around. Every driver we work with has their own pluses and minuses that we have to work through.

To finish the question though, most people reach out to us, and we see what's available, or not available. And really just decipher where they're trying to go, and what they're trying to do. We let them tell us their story, and before we even respond, a lot of times we can make a lot of headway on whether this person will be a good fit for what we do every day.

I figure having some guys like Byron, Nasse, and Roderick must almost in a way serve as a bit of an advertisement for ACR to bring some attention to it's name. But also maybe help with the notebook - obviously the team knows how to set-up as soon as they unload at a track, but helping that notebook out a bit having experienced drivers like that on the team as well.

Yeah, for sure, it's been really good. A lot of veteran drivers are who've done this for a long time, and have come through the program in the last 12-18 months. It's really interesting how many different ways there are to 'skin a cat', as far as ways to put a fast race car on the track. You know, you'd think there would be just about one model for most people, but there's a lot of races where our end result with one car is completely a 180 to another car sitting right next to us, and they're all very well rounded, established drivers. They maybe ended up running 1-2, but two totally different ways to getting there. But it does help as far as being established, and winning with a bunch of young kids, almost sometimes does more than winning with William Byron or Casey Roderick, because people expect them to compete in the win. But in the other sense, those names coming through the program, and trusting in us and wanting to compete with us, helps to add a different kind of credibility. A kid that most of the country hasn't heard of winning a big races, is what does the most for us from a certain aspect, but showing up to 10 or 12 races with William Byron because he chooses to be here, certainly adds credibility.

That's a good point, too. What really caught my eye about ACR initially, was Giovanni Bromante, who to many people came out of nowhere. Also your point about many different ways to run a race, too - a good example is during Derek Thorn's very dominant streak at the Snowball Derby, a lot of people tried to emulate his style, like Bubba Pollard for example I believe tried it, but he just couldn't do it; his car wasn't set up for it.

Yeah, we go through that drivers right next to each other in the same exact cars, set up in the same exact way, but by the end of a 48 hour period, one is completely one way, and another is completely set up the other way. Just sheerly out of how a guy approaches the corner with his car angle, his lift points, and his braking points, and where he chooses to place himself on the track, it can really deviate the set-up massively. We definitely see that, so a lot of times you can build a good notebook and learn a lot of things, but especially when you have a lot of these veteran drivers, you're not really coaching, because you're just focusing on how they want to run the track, and what they need to feel, and you can end up with two totally different results for what they need to be happy, and still end up running with the same speeds.

It's been a really good learning curve for us, we've done this for 12 years now, and I'd say 8 to 9 of them have definitely been based off of working with the drivers that we're starting from scratch with, so now working from a reverse role, you'd think it would be easy as pie. But sometimes it doesn't correlate to have that instant success, if you can't get that driver exactly what they need.

ACR has seen tons of success over the years. Have there been any big challenges or hard times?

I don't think so (any hard times) from a business aspect. We've been really fortunate with really good people. One of our best years, like you were saying, that really started to put us on the map as far as the travelling team that can compete across the country was that year you spoke of with Giovanni Bromante. We'd done a light Pro Late Model schedule with him. [Yeah, I saw that - with Alabama and stuff] Yeah, we saw a lot of success there, we did as much as we could in the Pro Late Model ranks. We came out of the gates really strong with the Rattler 250 debut, and then we won the first Southern Super Series race he was in at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola (Florida), in the first Blizzard Series race. That really helped - that year we had him, Sammy Smith, and Colby Howard, they all ran for us that year. Depending on where we were on the map, a lot of them had very minor experience until they got with us. And we had a lot of success with all 3 of them, with different disciplines and regions, between the Pro, the Super, the Midwest, the Southeast. But as far as hard times,, I don't think so, just your general racing struggles throughout the year. Making sure you're on top of your technology curve, always searching to make sure your stuff is better. It' s been a really rewarding couple of years.

How big is the ACR team, in terms of workforce? It is obvious that they know what they are doing, and are an attractive destination for elite, established drivers, and top prospects, alike.

Back at home it pretty much runs off of a 5 person organization, and then at the track we have a really good group of people that have been with us for - most of them, 5 to 8 years now. So when we show up to a track with 2 or max 3 cars, a lot of times we have 15 to 18 crew guys with us that have done work with us 30 to 40 times a year, but still have normal jobs, that allow them to get off work for about 4 days a week when needed. We have a great group of people that we can pull from that are loyal and have been committed to us for a long time now.

So, you're Anthony Campi. You started racing in the 1990s as a young kid? Is 2007 the origin of ACR in Super Late Models, when you made the step up? I saw that you, a third generation racer made the step up to Supers in 2007.

I was born in 1991, started racing in probably 1994, when I was 3 - 3 1/2, went through Go Karts, Legends Cars, Pro Trucks, and then jumped to Supers when I was 16. Ran Supers from about 16 to 20, 21, we had a good race schedule in Florida. Not a lot of travelling, with what we had going on in our lives. But we ran Supers all across the country, and there was one team that did this way back, and I'd show up to the track with my dad with one volunteer helper, all by myself. And for what we had, we felt like we would compete with them, or beat them, 50% of the time. And that was where I got this idea, that I could do this myself. I thought 'man, we're doing so much, with so little, compared to some of these other race team, or people that have been doing this their whole lives, why couldn't I do this every day? If I'm already beating them, or having big success, or comparable success, for having this as a grass roots hobby'. So that came to light when I was around 21 years of age - now I'm 33, and we've been doing it ever since.

That's really impressive, because of your age, and when the team started, I figured your dad was also named Anthony Campi or something, and it was his team, and you were their first racer or something. That's quite impressive that you were able to start this at such a young age.

Yeah, it really worked out. I had a little jump start obviously, having our own small race team that we already had, that was 1 Late Model, 1 tiny trailer, and we took it from there. We did a couple of 1 off races - we've been in business for about 12 years. In the first year, we only did maybe 1 or 2 races, because this idea hadn't even really been formed yet, and people didn't even know it was a thing. And then the next year, it was 5 to 10 races, and people were starting to come. We were doing it on a daily basis, and doing good, and we realized this is something that we can maybe look at. This was also before this big wave of things happening in the world - I was racing Supers since I was 18, 19, 20, and I felt like back then, the next oldest person was 26 to 30, and the rest of the field was 30s to 40s, and it was all guys that did this for a living, or this is how they made their income, back when that was a little bit more feasible.

This whole idea of 'hey, we're going to put kids in a car, we're going to be a stepping stone to NASCAR' that wasn't really a mainstream idea like it is now. So I guess I'd say, the first few years, if we wanted to circle back to the struggle question, just trying to prove a point to the average person, and trying to prove that we had enough credibility and means to be successful, and I think it was around the 3rd year that we hit a 20 to 25 race deal with a Spint Car kid out of Austraillia. That kind of gave us the means the be on the road half the year, and with that being said, you're spending all year on the road, posting stuff on the internet, and winning races. From there on out, it's just been nonstop. The first year or 2, especially when this wasn't a normal thing in the world yet, or totally accepted, I'd say it was a struggle to prove the concept, to prove the idea, that we were capable of doing it.

So now when people say they're going to start a development team, often the goal is to help kids to get to NASCAR, or get to the top levels of the sport, or whatever their current goal is. Now it's adding them to the list, where as back then it didn't seem like that was the thing for mostly anybody.

That makes sense. That would have been around 2012 or so when you started with other people - I think you did a little racing yourself still until about 2015 or so. It seems like a couple of years in, was about the time you just started to see a few people like Chandler Smith coming in, or Carson Hocevar shortly after that, coming in at about 13, or 14 and stuff in the Pro Late Model.

Yeah, and it's cool, it's fun you know, a lot of people who went a different route and raced against a lot of the guys that I had, and went on to NASCAR and had a lot of success, and then to see them come back and do some late model shows. It was cool, because we did watch Chandler Smith's progression from really, really young, and we watched him in Trucks, and Xfinity, and then we had him for about 2 years for a couple of big races (Super Late Model), so stuff like that is really cool. People paving their own path and way at the time, having their NASCAR success or opportunities, and then wanting to come back and give us a chance at it. It means a lot to us, doing that with him, and various other people.

My last Super race at New Smyrna was the Clyde Hart Memorial - I got the pole on the race. William Byron was in that race, so that was before he became the NASCAR star that he is now. Then to fast forward 10 to 12 years from now, and he's racing for us, already a NASCAR star, and we're doing this completely different business model of producing these stars. It's really cool how it comes full circle a lot of times for drivers, their past, our past, and how we always meet back up.

Looking at some of your alumni, I see and remember a lot of familiar names racing for ACR, like: Katie Hettinger, Giovanni Ruggiero, Chandler Smith, Sammy Smith, Chase Purdy, Ryan Luza, and many more. I noticed Johnny VanDoorn and Brian Campbell, that's really neat. I didn't know those two had raced for ACR. I also noticed Raphael Lessard. I knew Raphael raced for Todd Gilliland and Kyle Busch Motorsports, and a one-off for Donnie Wilson, I didn't realize he also ran for ACR. Connor Zilisch I see, as well. Zilisch really caught my eye on the CARS Tour Pro Late Model side of things last year, which made me also start to recognize him on the Late Model Stock Car side. He seems very good.

Just like a race can sometimes be all about momentum, I enjoy seeing momentum outside of a race, too. This touches on my next point of discussion: I just noticed on your website, it says Colby Howard and Casey Roderick will be in the Alabama 200 2 weeks from now. I'm looking forward to that!

It's nice to see Colby back. This kind of ties into a question I have, and we've already touched on some of this. So, a few years ago, my first time seeing Giovanni Bromante was winning at Montgomery Motor Speedway in Alabama in a Pro Late Model. He was supposed to make his Super Late Model debut, but I believe a 4-wheeling accident delayed that, due to a back injury. [Anthony said Yes] When he did make his debut, it was in the ACR #81, and he beat Harrison Burton and Ty Majeski for the Rattler 250.

Seeing young Gio win in his Super Late debut against that competition, and for the Rattler, obviously had me excited. His next race was the Blizzard Series opener at Five Flags Speedway, Florida. Casey Roderick and Connor Okrzesik seemed to have the cars to beat, and Gio was a third place car. But then calamity occured, and a wreck caused by fluid on the track changed everything. Gio safely spun, although he had to start from the rear with only a few laps left. Gio muscled his way very impressively to the front, passing multiple cars every lap, in the corners, through the turns, and down the straights, and ran away with a second straight win.

Right after this, Colby Howard made his debut at Montgomery Alabama in the Pro Late Model, and beat Bubba Pollard for the win. A win where Bubba actually suspected cheating, so the motor was shipped off, to ensure it was legit, and it came back legit. Since this is my favourite kind of racing, I was a bit bummed not seeing any more of Colby Howard, but I knew why - I saw him in the NASCAR Truck Series, and in some Xfinity races. I followed him there, and hoped for the best. I am really glad to see him back, though.

What I really want to know, is what happened with Bromante? I know he announced ARCA plans and had some races there, and still made a few starts in a Super, but it seemed like he just stopped racing suddenly. Is there anything you know, or are able to speak about on that situation?

Yeah, we had done his Pro deal with us, and his Super season was quite successful, especially for his first year. There was a lot of buzz, as there should have been. And there were a lot of aspirations - I think they signed an ARCA deal, and had a lot of aspirations to run the whole ARCA season. From my knowledge, I think maybe a lot of things got over-promised and under-delivered, and being that good of a driver, as we all know doesn't take you the whole way. With as much success and exposure, and hype and everything that we had, even doing the best Super Late Model racing won't always give you the best sponsor, or sponsors to come in and take him to the next step. Super Late Model is very expensive, but the next step - you add a lot more zeroes very quick. I think they tested the waters with that, and were a little disappointed maybe with some of the stuff they were given to work with, and they saw the writing on the wall, that they couldn't self-fund this to the top themselves.

It was going to be very hard, at least at that time/that world, to rely on other people, when they kind of looked at it as their kid had probably done just as good, if not better, than most people in their first year, but just couldn't get a lot of things to line up properly as far as sponsorship dollars to help them to jump to the next level. That's about all there was to it, which happens to a lot of people. There are a lot of drivers out there that probably deserve a shot at that level, and never get it.

A lot of our success that year with him and Colby was that we really started off on a good page, and really, really clicked as people, a group, and a team. A lot of that sometimes gets underrated. Sometimes you've really got to know what a person wants, and how they want it, and the way they talk in practice about a car. Someone can say a car is tight, but when you really get to know someone, they could be something that isn't really a big deal, or something that is urgent, and we really need to dig deep and look this thing over to find more speed. That just comes with time and experience, and getting to one another. And that year with those two drivers, it just came easier then harder.

As far as Colby Howard's return, he's going to come back and run various races with us, probably 12 of them on the schedule. Most of them are supers, but we felt like for as long as he's been out of a Late Model, and for as much success as we've had in the past at Montgomery, and how much has changed in the world since then, as far as technology in race cars, we felt like coming back to this racing, we could get him up to speed with what has changed since he's been gone, and get the cob webs dusted off there. Then we can start his Super venture from there, working around his schedule with other events and series'. I believe he has a (NASCAR) Truck race with Tricon soon. We'll also have him at North Wilksboro in the Pro car, since they won't be offering Supers this year.

I was disappointed when I didn't see North Wilksboro on the ASA schedule this year, but I'm glad to hear you say they will run Pros there. Do you know what series it will be for, or anything?

The CARS Tour is going there, and they'll have the Pros one day, and the Late Model Stocks the other day. I believe it will be the same All Star Weekend that they did this year, just minus the Supers. And then I believe the CARS Tour goes there again later in the year - I'm not sure if it's October or November, for another one off event. But it's going to be a really hyped up event, kind of like they had last year, just not with Supers. I never really got to the bottom of, or asked why, what happened there, but we're just going to try and go and support however best we can with 1, 2, or 3 Pro cars and just do the best we can, and support short track racing.

Anthony Campi Racing’s journey is a narrative of nurturing talent, and continuously pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the fast lane. As ACR writes new chapters, its impact on the sport and its drivers is sure to remain a cornerstone of Late Model racing.