Behind the wheel of the No. 36 Ford in the Qwick Wick Super Stock Series, Lane Zardo was one of those in the thick of the battle for the championship all season long, highlighted by a trip to victory lane at Sunset Speedway. 

He also found success as a crew chief, too, leading his brother Billy Zardo to a fourth-place finish in the Junior Hanley Classic as part of Sunset’s Fall Velocity weekend. 

We recently caught up with Lane Zardo to get his thoughts on the 2023 race season for both programs, as well as the outlook for 2024……

What are your thoughts as you look back on the 2023 race season?

We were pretty much at Delaware all year and ran against the best competition every single week and with how they do the line-up format, when you’re fast, it makes it so difficult to win a feature. Saying that, we had a great success everywhere else we went. I think we finished second about eight times at Delaware. Every time we went to Sunset, we won – we won four times, and had a pretty good effort with the traveling series which was pretty fun.

Saying that, it was also a battle at the beginning of the year with my late model team having to re-organize the whole dynamic of the team from the ground up.

So looking back on the year, what would you say is your most memorable moment?

I’d have to choose three. It would be wrecking Nagy accidently, getting sent to the back at Sunset and coming back to win the race, as well as running the Pro Late Model – or having my brother getting a top-four finish at the end of the year in our Pro Late Model.

I was just going to say. How rewarding is it to see the success with the family team in knowing how much effort is going into that behind the scenes?

It’s a weird feeling that not many people understand where I’m coming as they’re not lucky enough to get an opportunity that I have. But I love driving for the 36 team and will never say no when the option is there. It gives me a lot of pride that someone trusts me, but with the finishes that come from that, it doesn’t affect my emotions too much. For myself, there’s not as much pride as I’m not the one making the car fast; where with my own team, we’re working on the car till two o’clock in the morning, especially with having to rebuild with my grandfather out of the picture.

It felt really good with how unprepared we were the first night, to being one of the most prepared teams at the end of the year. You can’t compare the pride when you’re the person who builds it from the ground up. It comes from re-organizing the trailer every week and making sure we have all the nuts and bolts and all the spare parts, and the pit cart is put together properly for war if we do have to come into the pits, to rebuilding speed and remolding my brother as a driver. There’s a lot of pride – even though I’m not the one driving the car, it definitely gives you more pride.

What is your favourite track to run at in the province?

My favourite track to actually race at would be Delaware. It’s just such a weird race track and whatever you know about racing, you just throw out of the window when you go onto the concrete. The straightaways are very narrow so you feel the speed. The facility, just as a team owner, is at Sunset there. Their pits and grandstands, and the facility they have is just incredible.

I talked about this with Carson Nagy, but the competition level in the Super Stocks has to be considered top-notch right now with five different winners in five tour events for 2023.

I love super stock racing so much, because I enjoy driving a more heavy, ill-handling car, which is what a super stock is. Then when you throw in a bunch of these younger kids who are still kind of learning who they are as a driver and making their own mistakes but yet very good still, it’s very fun and the amount of people that are able to win on any given night makes it a very good show for the fans.

I mean, I feel like super stocks at Sunset for the fans was always the greatest show to watch. But now it’s just kind of revising itself with this newer generation where it’s very aggressive racing, but it’s very – as a driver who makes those aggressive moves, you know when it goes over the line. For the most part, we do a very good job making sure it’s worth it when we do be that more a little aggressive and know where the other person is coming from.

Where do you feel that you need to improve upon when it comes to both programs that you have going on right now?

With the 36 program, it’s just me as a driver. I get the luxury of – sometimes the car is even unloaded when I get there. So it’s just kind of about staying focused, and one thing I struggled with a little this year which I need to get back is when I make a mistake, I need to forget about it right away and not let that mistake cause another mistake.

Just get over it as soon as I can, because the one thing that I struggle in my own head when the car is prepared so well like it is, if I make a mistake, everybody else did their job correctly. I could just say less mistakes, but the greatest drivers are still going to make mistakes. So it’s overcoming that mistake as soon as possible, and not thinking about it.

When it comes to the Zardo Racing program, it’s just building on the organization that we are doing, which we have started from the ground-up redoing the shop and keep showing up prepared each week and we’ll keep climbing the ladder there.

So what are the plans for 2024?

I can’t speak too much for the 36 team – there are still a lot of things in motion. I will be back driving for them. But there’s still some things that need to get ironed out to be done for sure.

But I am confident with the 46 program that we’ll be getting a new chassis built and we’re going to try to – with my brother having a baby on the way, not being able to commit full-time, and me driving the 36 car, we’re going to have a bit of an outlaw schedule in hitting the bigger events. We’re going to support Sunset Speedway as much as possible. They were very kind and generous with us and everything happening with my grandfather, but we’re mostly trying to branch out a little bit into the States and run a few races in New York. So just doing an outlaw schedule – racing bigger races and making it quality over quantity.

We’ve talked about family throughout this, so I have to ask. With multiple family members having been involved in racing, what has it been like having those people to lean on?

It truly makes me look at people who don’t have the support and work twice as hard, I’m more of a fan of them. I’ve had an incident where I was talking in a group and there was a bone stock driver that would’ve struggled to a top-10 finish and before talking with me, he’d think my head may be all in the year and I got everything given to me – which I can’t deny having everything given to me. I just make sure it’s worth it for what people do and I work twice as hard.

But when I see someone working out of a driveway on a bone stock struggling a top-10 finish, I make sure I’m their biggest fan because I’m not ignorant to how easy it always was for me to get to the race track and I just need to make sure I always know how much support I’ve always had from people. When I see people who aren’t doing that as much working twice as hard, I really got to have my dues in being their biggest fan and making sure they know that they’re the reason this sport is going thrive, pumping them up, and helping them out where I can.

So I guess long story short – it made it so easy to be the type of person and driver I am, and opened a lot of doors early on when I didn’t need to open the door as it was always open. So I just need to make sure I give recognition that don’t have it as easy as me.

So with that in mind, what’s a piece of advice that you’d offer that bone stock driver out there whose looking to make their mark?

Having emotional control. You’re able to lose battles and still win a war. Making sure you never burn bridges because you could get into it with someone one week and you need to use their welder the next weekend at the race track; it’s always comes full circle. If you’ve got not nice things to say, make sure to say them in a very small group of people and not on social media. Don’t say anything bad that may bite you in the ass because you don’t know whose parents are sitting behind you in the grandstands. So just – emotional control, and don’t be a dick I guess.