(C) Debbie Jo Zardo

When Lane Zardo came out for practice before the season started, one thing many people noticed right away – the super stock was no longer white, but rather black and green.

“I’ve always had a black car coming out of my shop for a reason and if people want to rough me up there, they will remember why I owned a black racecar,” he told Short Track Musings.

Zardo has kicked off the season in a good way, too, as evident with a runner-up finish in the season opener for the Steel City Series this past weekend at Flamboro Speedway.

“I am very excited about it,” he commented. “Flamboro has a what I would call a four and a half race series – we are there five times, but one of them is with the Dayco Series so we get points for both. We’re still going to try to win, obviously, but I’m excited for that for the four-five races of that, and the four-five races of the Dayco Series to travel across Ontario with some of my best friends. I don’t know. When I go to a party, if there’s nobody there from the race track, I don’t know – I’m kind of quiet. I’m normally very outspoken at the racetrack, but like racing my whole life; this is all I care about doing so I’m just excited to get going again.”

Last year, Zardo put together the perfect season in winning both series championships with wins in both series. Although with how the Dayco Series season ended, Zardo admits it took some to feel good about taking home the title.

“I’ve lost a bunch of championships the same in a similar fashion as how Carson (Nagy) did;’ like, I’ve been so close and something happened where I should have won and I didn’t,” Zardo explained. “I always thought if I won one that way, it would make up for it, and at the start, it didn’t. It just felt like I got screwed from a few championships and I lucked into one. Then after talking with a bunch of people and whatnot, I started feeling a lot better about it. After talking to Carson about it as well and went on, because I was very worried about Carson; he took a hell of a lick.”

When asked about his favourite moment of the season, there was not a single moment which stood out that Zardo focused upon.

“I mean about two hours after I won the championship, I was feeling pretty good about it. I’m not gonna lie – the next morning, I was not,” Zardo commented. “I don’t know. I used to be all about the big moments in life, when honestly, my favorite moments right now are driving to the racetrack for my girlfriend and driving home from the racetrack with my girlfriend. We just pump each other up and it’s a fun time, and it’s a hell of a way to spend our life together.”

Now as he gets ready to defend both championships, his competitors are working at finding ways to improve to be at the same level as he is right now. Now finding a way to match that on his side of the things is admittedly going to be tough.

“They can’t prepare that race car any better than they can,” Zardo explained. “The center section of that race car is from 1996. I am 30 years old and I’m born in 1996; that race car is 30 years old now. It does have a new clip on it – and by new clip, I mean, in 2011, it got a new clip. So once again, that clip is even 15 years old. So like to prepare the car, I don’t know if they can do a better job.

“I mean, we’re racing against guys that have chassis worth $60,000, and our chassis is worth about $5000. So with that car, there’s not much more we can do where we’re batting and way out of our range. I don’t know if it’s worth it to grab a new car for running in that division or not, but I know we’re having fun doing what we are doing so we’re gonna keep on doing it.”

The Dayco Series will take him across the province once again, beginning with Delaware Speedway this weekend on Saturday, May 9. Choosing a certain track of the four that he is looking forward to becomes a tough question as he admits “every weekend I’m on the race track is the best day of my life.”