The Racing Report is a five-part photo essay shot at short tracks in Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania that will run in Farm and Dairy through the summer. Each month we will feature a different driver from around the region. For the fourth installment, photojournalist Matthew Chasney went to Norton Raceway Park, in Summit County, Ohio, on Aug. 2 to follow the Mazzagatti family.
“I’m telling you, something is either broken or it’s about to break”, insists 13-year-old super late model racer Chloe Mazzagatti. The Mazzagatti Racing crew is gathered around her in the team’s hauler. The car isn’t rolling through the corners correctly. The crew thinks it’s a setup issue, but she’s certain that something has been damaged. Chloe finished in sixth place at New Paris Speedway in Indiana the previous night. The car wasn’t handling well there either, but she chalked it up to getting the setup wrong at an unfamiliar track. However, here at her home track, Norton Raceway Park (formerly Barberton Speedway), she knows that it’s something deeper than a simple setup issue. She knows Norton well. After all, her father, two-time late model track champion Mike Mazzagatti, used to own it.
Chloe first showed an interest in racing at the age of 3. She especially enjoyed working on the cars and learning about what makes them go fast. She earned 15 wins racing in the legends class last year. In her first year in late models, she has notched one win and nine top-five finishes. She learned car setup and racecraft from her dad, and she learned patience from her mom, Lisa.
“You’re not going to win it on the first lap” was the best lesson her mom ever gave her.
Her little brother Michael is having a very different kind of night. His car is running well. He just won the Bandalero heat race, and he would go on to win the feature. The 10-year-old has racked up four feature wins and seven top-five finishes in his fourth season of racing. When he’s not in a race car, he can be found around the pits with his camera in hand. Inspired by the late Billy McKinney, who was the track photographer at Norton, Michael started photographing race cars on his mom’s cell phone until he got his own camera.
The Mazzagatti family has a long history of racing at Norton. Mike’s father, uncle and stepdad all raced here. He grew up at the racetrack, and he’s been racing himself since 1997. Mike has raced just about everywhere, but Norton is one of his favorites because of its unique challenges. “It’s a tight, small, hard to pass on track,” he said.
What is it like to compete against your children? “It can be nerve-racking,” Mike says, but he believes that he can’t be protective of them on the track. “They gotta learn how to hold their own.”
It’s a sentiment that Chloe shares.
“I’m gonna run him how I run everyone else and he’s gonna run me the same way he runs everyone,” she said.
During the late model feature, Mike has a front row seat to his daughter’s handling woes. He sees that she was right — a broken right rear end is the likely culprit. They’ll have to tear the car down later in the week to know for sure. The setup didn’t work, and the handling issues continue, so Chloe changes her driving style to suit the car. Despite the challenges, she slowly reels in Chris Grubbs and passes him in turn 3. She finishes in third place in the McIntosh Oil Late Model Feature — just ahead of her dad.
When asked what his favorite memories from a life of racing are, Mike immediately answers “watching my kids win.”
