Pete Zanardi

Journalist, PR Director
CLASS OF 2008

Pete Zanardi became involved in covering motorsports in the late 1950s. Over the next 50 years, he’s wrote about auto racing for newspapers, including the Manchester Times, Hartford Times, and New Haven Register. He’s worked at racing publications including Stock Car and Open Wheel Magazine, Racing Times, Trackside, and Speedway Scene. Pete’s also contributed to Circle Track Magazine, National Speed Sport News, and Popular Mechanics.

Pete has worked as a media coordinator/public relations director at both Stafford Speedway and Waterford Speedbowl, and worked as a consultant to Joe Gerber when Gerber ran the Race of Champions. At Waterford in the late 1990’s, he was part of the team that created the Budweiser Modified Nationals, the first SK Modified race to be 200 laps in length and feature a $5,000 winner’s purse. He was also instrumental in the track securing a NASCAR sanction for the 2000 season.

As a baseball writer, Pete was inducted into the Hartford Twilight League Hall of Fame in 1975, and won a national writing award from the Collegiate Baseball Writer’s Association in 1976. He’s twice received writing awards from the Eastern Motorsports Press Association, and won the Permatez Award for a story, “Greasy Hands”, which appeared in Stock Car Racing Magazine in 1970.

Zanardi has been a long time NEAR member, and has served on NEAR Hall of Fame committees since it’s inception in 1998. He was the recipient of the Frank Maratta Award in 2000 and the Dan Pardi Award in 2012.