LOUDON – Two of the most important things in Scott “Zig” Geno’s life are his family and racing.
It’s easy to tell by taking a look at the his lemon-yellow No. 57 Chevrolet, where “Geno Family” is printed in big black letters across the rear quarter panels.
The people who work on Geno’s car and support him on race weekend are almost all family members. The ones who are not related by blood may as well be.
“Family has always been a part of it,” he said.
The family was with him again this past weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the second annual New England Short Track Showdown, where Geno ran what might be his final race.
Geno, a resident of Canterbury who started out racing Street Stock cars at Bryar Motorsports Park in 1985, said he is hanging up the firesuit after 33 years driving race cars. He owns this car, and as an owner-driver he knows as well as anybody how expensive this sport can be.
“Retirement has been on my mind the last year or two,” Geno said. “I just don’t have the finances to do it, and I’m certainly not getting any younger. There are a lot of good young racers, and they’re in well-prepared vehicles. They are really class drivers.”
One of those youngsters is Reid Lanpher, a 20-year-old from Manchester, Maine, who passed 10-time NHMS winner Eddie McDonald on the last lap. Lanpher held on to win the $5,000 check in the Granite State Pro Stock Series race.
While Lanpher rolled into Victory Lane, Geno rolled back to the garage with a 14th-place finish. The Geno Family car was fast and competing toward the front in the first few laps, but an issue with the clutch – which was discovered in practice earlier Sunday – was giving the pilot fits.
“We thought something was going wrong in the rear end and it turned out it was the clutch and it was getting progressively worse,” Geno said after the race. “Anytime I was behind slower cars I couldn’t get to the throttle.”
“The car was way better than I showed,” he added. “I was starting to get the hang of this place … But that’s the last one I guess.”
Or is it? Geno’s longtime friend, Ken Soucy, doesn’t think so.
“His last time racing? No. It might be the last time he drives this car,” he said. “It’s Ziggy. There’s always one more time.”
Soucy has been a part of Geno’s racing family since they met at Race Fever in downtown Concord some 19 years ago. Geno was showing his car and had a small sign displayed in front of it, which read, “Crew Members Wanted. Long Hours. (No Pay).”
That was good enough to reel in Soucy, whose 7-year-old son was the first one to point it out to him.
Their first race together at Claremont Speedway ended after 10 laps and the car was nearly totaled. It took about three or four hours of them bending metal before they could get the car back into the trailer.
Geno and Ken, along with several others volunteering their free time, spent long days and longer nights fixing and replacing parts. Three weeks after the Claremont race, the car was on the track at Lee USA Speedway.
Geno eventually earned a seat in a car from another owner with its own crew. Soucy went in a different direction and got into snowmobile racing with his family. They remained friends and Soucy continued to help work on Geno’s cars through the years.
“It’s fast, it’s dangerous, it’s expensive, it’s crazy, it’s stupid, but it’s the most fun we’ve ever had,” Soucy said. “I would do it all again starting tomorrow.”
When Soucy heard Geno was going to run his last race on Sunday, he wanted to support the car not only in the garage but as a sponsor as well.
Soucy owns Pinnacle Landscape Services in Hopkinton. He asked Geno to put his company’s name “under the roof.” Recognition wasn’t as important as helping his friend make his last race a good one.
But it didn’t go under the roof. Instead, Geno had the company name placed in the most prominent advertising position on a stock car: the hood.
“They’re good people and I wanted to be part of it,” Soucy said.
It wasn’t a day without issues for Geno and his car, but he was happy to finish the race, especially after he had to avoid a wreck in Turn 2 with about 19 laps to go.
“I saw a big cloud of smoke, Days of Thunder style,” he said. “The car is in one piece and we can decide what to do now. Maybe I’ll sell it to somebody and they’ll put me in it.”
(Nick Stoico can be reached at nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)