The week before, Alex Bartorillo damaged his sportsman modified in a crash and didn’t have the right tools to properly fix it. The day of the race, while heading to the track, a police officer pulled him over. But fast forward to the end of the night, and Alex celebrated in victory lane, his first win in 2 years. Despite hiccups along the journey, Alex never gave up.
On Saturday, Alex just wanted to get the track, but the police officer stopped him halfway through his 15-minute drive to Grandview Speedway.
“I went into a panic,” Alex, of Limerick Township, Pennsylvania, said. “He told me my trailer registration had expired. I was worried about making the show.”
Alex didn’t argue with the police officer, remaining polite. When the officer walked back to his police car, Alex called his father at work.
“I told Dad, ‘This was an emergency. Please go online and pay my registration,’” Alex said. “The officer came back smiling. He said, ‘I see you just renewed your registration — that was quick.’ He gave me a written warning.”
Alex, just him and his car, arrived at the pit gate at 5:20 p.m. Warm-ups started at 6:15 p.m. Alex’s uncle and a friend helped him unload his 10-year-old Bicknell modified. The week before, the car was involved in a crash, where it bent the shock tower. It forced Alex to use some ingenuity (and the might of a hammer) to remove remnants of the damaged tower from the mount, but Alex made it to the races. And all that effort was worth it.
Alex Bartorillo qualified through his heat race and started outside pole for the feature. He went onto win the race with the same car, same engine he last won with on August 10, 2024.
“I was determined to race all week,” Alex said. “I told myself, ‘If I think I could win, I will win.’ It was all about having a positive attitude, even when the chips were down.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
