CHOOSING SIDES: Pallai Turns to Racing to Fuel Competitive Fire
Stafford Springs, CT — Five years ago, Jack Arute posed a simple question to a lanky, 15-year-old kid in a bustling pit area at Stafford Motor Speedway.
“You wanna drive one of my cars?” Arute asked, wide eyes and a wider grin.
Richie Pallai Jr. almost deferred to his father. He looked in the direction of the family patriarch, caught himself and turned back to Arute. He didn’t want to give his father a chance to make up his mind for him. That split-second decision to answer for himself changed Pallai’s sporting life forever.
“That night at Stafford, Teddy Christopher dumped somebody for the lead. So Jackie Arute comes up to me and says, ‘So, you want to do this?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, there’s nothing more I want to do than try this,’ ” Pallai recalled, standing in that same Stafford pit area before a NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour event there earlier this month. “He said, ‘OK, we’re starting an SK Light division next year. You wanna drive my car?’
“I turned to my dad and was wondering if I should ask him. In my head, I’m like ‘Nah.’ I turned to Jackie and said, ‘Yeah. I definitely want to drive your car.’ “
After one year of running Mini Sprints at Whip City Speedway in 2005, Pallai was in Arute’s SK Light Modified. This year, he’s running for Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors on the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour, having parlayed his on-the-job training in Stafford’s weekly NASCAR Whelen All-American Series SK Modified division into racing a regional tour.
But the decision to drive a race car wasn’t as simple as being handed the keys to a ride and choosing to go fast. It came with a price tag, where chasing one dream meant easing his grip on another. Pallai had to put a serious hockey career on the bench.
“Playing hockey every day, I almost got burnt out,” said Pallai, who is 14th in the WMT standings through 10 races. “Racing’s so unique. I get a thrill racing. I know you can say I’m a ‘junkie’ or whatever, but I really do like the speed. I really just think it’s cool. I always wanted to do it, but my dad always told me, ‘It’s racing or hockey. We can’t afford both.’ I always chose hockey.
“But I got to playing such a high level of hockey, it became like a job to me. I played (NCAA Division III at Connecticut College) for a year before I transferred. I’d go to class, I’d go to the weight room for an hour, then I’d get right on the ice. Then I’d have to go and do homework.
“I just realized, this isn’t for me.”
But racing, it seems, is. And it’s not simply because Pallai goes out and wins races every week — in fact, he has just one career SK Modified victory at Stafford (in the 2009 season opener) and only one career top-10 finish on the Tour.
Like any athlete, Pallai thrives on the challenge of competition.
“The more and more we come here, the better we get (at Stafford), but at the same time, I like to go to other places and learn those tracks,” said Pallai, 20, a sophomore a New York University where he’s studying sports management. “I feel like we’ve raced here so many times that we should run well. But then again, you come home and after a Tour race (at Staffrod) if you didn’t run up front, you’ve got to realize who you’re racing with.
“I honestly think the competition here is the best in the country. I’ve never raced in a division that you can line up and there will be 12 guys that could run away with the race. It’s shown this year. Bobby (Santos) started off strong, Jimmy (Blewett’s) been strong when he’s run, Teddy’s been strong, (Ryan) Preece has been strong. Then you get surprises like Erick Rudolph — don’t get me wrong, he’s a great driver — but you can see down the ladder, down the pits, all these guys can run well.”
Pallai has, too, at times. With the help of noted crew chief Denis Pruchnik (who worked with Sprint Cup Series Ford teams as a lead setup specialist prior to this year), his No. 39 Bosch Spark Plugs Chevrolet was eighth in the standings through the first five races of the year. But mechanical failures and a crash littered the next three stops on the circuit — at Lime Rock Park, Monadnock Speedway and Riverhead Raceway — to slow Pallai’s progress.
It’s part of the game, said Pallai. And he’s found a balance where he didn’t have to throw hockey completely away — competing on NYU’s club-level team.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to respect the fact that we are rookies and it’s a new team,” said Pallai, who has just one car and one engine at his disposal. “But when we go to the track, there’s no more excuses. There’s no reason we can’t run well. It’s good to hold yourself to higher standards. You have to expect things like that for yourself.
“I honestly believe, and not in an arrogant way, if you don’t show up to the race track knowing you can win, then you might as well go home.
“Realistically, do the critics think we can win? No. But can we? Yes. You have to be in the right place at the right time. That’s half the battle.”
The other half was making the decision to go racing in the first place.
Sources: Travis Barrett, Special to NASCARHomeTracks.com