The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘Fast Pasta’ ready for main course at Daytona
Ridgefield’s Alfredo, 21, will make debut Sunday
He got the nickname his first year of racing at Hickory Motor Speedway, a short track in Newton, N.C. Anthony Alfredo was competing in limited late models in 2016 for Lee Faulk Racing.
“I believe Trevor Townsend was the announcer at the time, and he called me that over the loudspeaker,” Alfredo said. “It ended up sticking. Here we are from the regional level to highest level of NSACAR and ‘Fast Pasta’ has grown more than I ever could have imagined.” Fast Pasta.
What a nickname for a stock car racer from Connecticut. It’s saucy. I can be served al dente at 200 mph. Alfredo even has a logo that shows him eating a bowl of pasta.
On Sunday, we will find out how fast Fast Pasta can make the No. 38 Ford Mustang run for Front Row Motorsports in the Daytona 500.
NASCAR is remarkable in its scheduling. The sport’s Super Bowl is the first week of the season. So here is Alfredo, who grew up in Ridgefield, making his NASCAR Cup Series debut at age 21 in The Great American Race.
“It’s hard to even put into words what this entire season means to me and what it is going to be like,” Alfredo said. “That part hasn’t fully set in. And for it to be, like you said, our Super Bowl, it makes it even more wild. It’s just surreal.
“It probably won’t fully
set in until I strap into my Ford Mustang at Daytona. Just a couple of calls we’ve had with NASCAR, to be in the same group chat as guys I grew up watching on TV is pretty neat.”
Looking for a young driver to fit into its team, Front Row announced on Jan. 6 that Alfredo would replace John Hunter Nemechek in the No. 38 car in 2021. This is a rapid advancement. Consider this: Fast Pasta has raced in 35 total ARCA, Truck Series and Xfinity Series races. There are 36 races alone on the 2021 Cup Series schedule. In 19 races last year sharing the No. 21 car for Richard Childress Racing in the Xfinity Series — one rung below the top level — Alfredo had nine top-10 finishes and a third at Texas Motor Speedway.
A year ago, would he have believed he’d be where he is?
“Probably not,” Alfredo said. “I had no idea. I’m just so thankful. I feel very blessed and definitely wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but I felt like I had a great year last year.”
The jump, he said, wasn’t made without serious consideration with his management, former team owners and his parents Rob and Veronica, who now live in Brookfield.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” Alfredo said. “I heard Corey LaJoie mention it when I was on radio with him how you can’t pass up the opportunity to race on Sunday and that’s definitely true. But it’s not because of the excitement as a driver that you want to compete at the Cup Series level. It’s because our partners are looking for the most exposure possible for them, a great team like Front Row is looking for someone young like myself to hopefully build a future in the sport and find a home for myself.
“What really stuck out was being able to run full time and do it with the largest schedule in NASCAR. It is huge for me to develop and grow. I’m looking forward to learning every week. Running part-time has humbled me in a way. You have a good run and then you have to wait a couple of weeks and lose that momentum. If you have a bad run, you can’t go out the next week and try to rebound. When races come few and far between you learn to make the most of every one.”
Alfredo started in indoor go-karts when he was only six. He didn’t own any of his equipment or anything like that. He just loved it. He also gave it up for about five years. He got into snowboarding, skateboarding, Esports. He played lacrosse into his time at Ridgefield High. At the end of his freshman year and into his sophomore year he got back into racing Legends cars and with the traveling he eventually switched to online schooling and graduated from high school through the Keystone School.
“Growing up in Ridgefield was awesome,” Alfredo said. “I’d love to do it all over again. I have friends I still stay in touch with until this day. And all my family is either in New York or Connecticut.”
There is a number of new teams this year in NASCAR, new people from outside racing getting involved as owners. Guys like Michael Jordan and Pitbull. There are some new tracks and new layouts and the first dirt track race in more than a half century at Bristol. The NextGen car was set to debut at the 2021 Daytona, but COVID pushed back its debut until 2022.
“It’s really cool what NASCAR has been doing to innovate and grow the sport,” Alfredo said. “Hopefully, people like myself can bring some new fans to the sport, being from a town where racing wasn’t that popular. Hopefully, childhood friends and kids I went to school with are now NASCAR fans.
“I got into racing through my parents. They were going to races before I was born. I just posted for my mom’s birthday a picture of her at the Richard Petty Experience before I was alive. It’s pretty neat. I was a fan before I was a driver. And I think that’s a pretty relatable story for a lot of people.”
He moved to North Carolina in 2016 and lives about 20 minutes from Charlotte. He said his first breakout year was driving for Dale Earnhart Jr.’s JR Motorsports team in the Late Model division of the Cars Tour in 2017, winning a handful of races and finishing second in the championship behind veteran teammate Josh Berry. He’d be a junior at UNC Charlotte if he hadn’t put his education on hold last year because of the increased travel and racing demands.
Michael McDowell has been a great teammate to lean on. They talk and text almost every day. Alfredo said McDowell has been particularly helpful with road racing where his own experience is short. They work the simulator together. He is wearing out the sim running laps to understand nuances of the Cup Series car’s horsepower and downforce ratio.
Make no mistake. This could be the real breakout year for Fast Pasta.
“I know it’s a huge step for myself and my career to be competing with childhood heroes of mine,” Alfredo said. “Guys who have been racing in this Series since before I was born or maybe one year old. Guys like Ryan Newman. It’s going to be a challenge to compete with them on a regular basis, but that’s probably what has me most psyched about this year.
“I feel this is just the beginning of something much larger.”
So the rookie from Ridgefield will look around Sunday and see three other Connecticut natives. A small New England state providing 10 percent of the Daytona 500 field. Who would have guessed that 25 years ago? Joey Logano originally from Middletown, of course, LaJoie from Norwalk, Ryan Preece of Berlin and Fast Pasta. Gentleman start your engines and pass the breadsticks.
“I remember growing it up it was really just Joey who was our hometown hero in Connecticut,” Alfredo said. “I was saying racing wasn’t super popular (in Ridgefield), but now to say I’m one four Connecticut drivers out of only 40 in the Cup Series is really cool.”