Photograph Courtesy of Torregiani Family
D riving seventy-two miles an hour, with forty racers simultaneously vying for first place, there’s only a split second to make a decision: pass or hang back? At the SKUSA Supernationals in Las Vegas last year, go-kart racer Tazio Torregiani decided to speed ahead. The race was twenty laps and by the fifth, he’d moved from fortieth to twelfth place. “I just remember passing everybody,” he says. But then he bumped another kart. “It just turned me into the curb. The frame was all bent and I went ten feet up in the air.
“I should have waited,” he continues. “I should have just calmed down and kept my focus on passing [the driver] again.”
Tazio recounts the experience, and everything that came before it, with an easy smile one recent evening at his Stamford home with his parents, Patrizio and Lucia, and brother Dario. The story begins ten years ago, when the fifteen-year-old first got behind the wheel. From the time he first drove as a six-year-old, it has been full speed ahead.
Says Patrizio: “The owner of the track came up to me and said ‘Wow! How long has he been driving a go-kart?’ I said, ‘This is his very first time.’ And he said ‘Really? You’ve got to get him a go-kart.’” So his parents did, marking the beginning of Tazio’s successful karting career so far. “I started racing, started winning races, and it just snowballed after that,” Tazio says.
Like his namesake, Tazio Nuvolari, the Italian Grand Prix driver who won numerous titles during his legendary career, Tazio would like to become a professional race car driver. Most pros, he points out, including Jeff Gordon and Ayrton Senna, earned their racing stripes go-karting. So Tazio is surely on the right track: He has thirty-one kart wins in all; most recently a national title in the World Karting Association Manufacturers Cup in South Carolina. He has raced against the best in Europe and Bahrain, where motorsports are extremely popular and ultra-competitive.
As intense as his racing schedule can be, Tazio impressed his Stamford High teachers with his focus. It’s a skill drawn from racing, where the top cars can be separated by only three-tenths of a second. “You blink that,” Tazio says. “Focus is one of the biggest things because without focus you can’t go fast; you can’t hit your marks; you can’t pay attention to what’s in front of you.” The Board of Education has recognized Tazio for Achievement in Racing.
Win or lose, Tazio believes the track can be a metaphor for life. What has racing taught him? “I’d definitely say patience, dedication…Patience because the race is ever so long.” Wise words from one of Stamford’s rising stars.