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Stephen Mallozzi Balancing Law School With Racing Dreams

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 rest is history.”

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During his hiatus from racing, Mallozzi attended the University of Virginia and graduated in 2022 with a degree in economics. He also specialized in sports broadcasting and journalism, and he was a semi-frequent contributor as an author to TobyChristie.com last year.

In a sport where TV, radio and websites are some of the primary avenues to connect with fans, Mallozzi is unique in having stood both in front of the camera and behind it this early into his career.

“I think it’s given me a different perspective on what it’s like to do my own stuff,” Mallozzi said. “By that, I mean I do my own tweets and write my own press releases and do my own stories.

“[It’s] how do I want to be perceived, right? And when you’re doing a lot of the journalism stuff or you’re behind the camera, it’s not about what you really want to say, it’s about what people want you to say and how you’re going to be perceived and the best way to communicate that information with them. I think that getting that experience has helped me present myself as a racecar driver too.”

Mallozzi’s climb back into racing and the NASCAR ranks hasn’t been easy, however, especially with all the costs that are required to compete at this level.

“The race-winning rides in the third-tier division of the Truck Series are $150,000-plus a race,” Mallozzi said.

“… People understand that to make it even at the lower levels, with teams that are a little less well-funded than other ones, it still costs a ton of money, and you have to work on these sponsorship deals for months and months before people are willing to sign a dotted line. … it’s so difficult to really get that stuff done.”

It’s a never-ending struggle for most drivers and crew members in the field, and Mallozzi’s low point came at World Wide Technology Raceway last season. Battling a variety of personal and financial difficulties at the time, Mallozzi described the race, which was derailed by battery problems, as his “version of hell.”

“After St. Louis, I was done,” Mallozzi said. “Truly, thoroughly, just done with this sport. I was so frustrated, and it was a culmination of things, right? And people don’t realize everyone from the pit crews to the drivers and owners to the media members [have] sacrificed so much of their lives to do this job.

“What ends up happening is, failure simmers with me for a while; I become reinspired to overcome that failure. That’s kind of what happened for Gateway. Took a couple of weeks, but after that time had passed, I was like, ‘it’s time to get off the fricking floor man, it’s time to go.’ Let’s go kick some ass and do this again. Then we had a great run at Pocono last year. I had a lot of fun, and it kind of reinspired me to keep doing this.”

One of the cooler storylines of last season was Outback Steakhouse agreeing to sponsor Mallozzi and AM Racing in the Truck race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Mallozzi worked as a server for Outback Steakhouse, and the two were able to strike a one-race deal to much fanfare.

“It’s not often that you see a corporate employer like that really show that type of interest in all their employees,” Mallozzi said. “And I’ve seen it with a lot of different Outback employees, and mine is one of the more publicized ones, but they really care at the fundamental human level, and that’s a super important thing. It makes me really proud to work for them. Landing that kind of sponsorship makes me pretty emotional because it’s something you never expected to do.”

Flash forward less than a year, and Mallozzi was making his Xfinity debut and running double duty at the track he calls home.

“To do this at my home track is … I don’t even have a word describe it,” Mallozzi said. “I grew up a couple of hours from [Pocono], and I never expected to drive any type of race car after I was 16 or 17 years old. I was willing to accept that for a really long time. And now we’re competing at the second highest level of stock car racing. Just one of things man, means the world to me.”

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In the present day, Mallozzi is juggling any NASCAR starts he can manage while attending law school at Temple University.

“Right now, I have a regular 9-5 job right now as a legal intern, and it’s weird,” Mallozzi said. “It’s like, I’m Superman sometimes and Clark Kent in others. I sit behind a desk 40 hours a week, but then those couple days on the weekend I’m going on 180 into turn 1 at Pocono.”

As for what the future holds, Mallozzi strives to have career stability while living out his passion for racing as much as he can.

“I’m like one of the few people in the world who gets to do this at a professional level, and it’s tough to know where I’m going to end up,” Mallozzi said. “I don’t know how to phrase it, because people ask me, ‘what’s your goal? What do you want to be? A racecar driver or a lawyer?’ It’s never been about that.

“The law is a career that I enjoy pursuing, and it’s a safe route where I’ll know I’ll be able to provide for people I love, people that I care about and have a stable career. Racing is my passion and my dream. It’s something I always want to go after, and if I figure out, I figure it out. And if I don’t, I got to live my dream more than I ever thought I would.”

Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly columns include “Stat Sheet” and “4 Burning Questions.” He also writes commentary, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.

Can find on Twitter @stephen_stumpf.

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