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Carrying on a Family Tradition
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Following in his father’s
footsteps, Rick Moroso keeps his family business, and race car,
at the forefront of the performance world
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Story by Brian Wood Photos by/courtesy of Brian Wood and www.moroso.com |
In the great sport of drag racing, many of today’s current crop of competitors have parents or even grandparents who have participated in the acceleration game before them, and passed their love and enthusiasm for the sport on to the next generation or two. This is a family-oriented pastime, after all, and kids who grow up at the race track quite often end up there as racers themselves sometime down the road.
So the fact that NSCA Hot Street competitor Rick Moroso is a second-generation racer is not in and of itself all that unusual. He’s one of many of today’s racers carrying on a proud family legacy in side-by-side competition. What does make his story a little different from all the rest is the fact that Moroso, of Guildford, Connecticut, is driving the same car that his father raced back in the 1960s. Moroso, 38, is the president of Moroso Performance Products, the company that his father Dick started back in 1968, and the beautiful ’61 Corvette that he runs in National Street Car Competition these days is the same car his dad bought in 1963 for $1,000. The nearly-new but slightly worse-for-wear car had survived a potentially disastrous fire after its original owner tried, unsuccessfully, to replace the factory fuel injection system with a carburetor. He was likely more than happy to take Dick’s money and see the last of the “hot” little coupe. For the additional expenditure of $500.00 the car was brought back to like-new condition, and driven on the street for a while before being converted to a racing configuration. It served for a while as a test bed during the formative years of Moroso Performance Products, evaluating and perfecting such important innovations as the now universally-employed four-link rear suspension.
Equipped with a powerful small block Chevy engine combination, the car was the terror of the east coast in both C Modified Production and D Modified Sports. The pinnacle of the Corvette’s early success came at the 1966 U.S. Nationals, where Dick won his class and finished runner-up to Joe Lunati for the Street Eliminator title. Two years later, however, Dick retired the little ‘Vette and turned his attention to making his new company a success.
Three years before, however, his son Richard Boyd had been born, and Rick, as he’s now known, has some vague but definite recollections of his first experiences at the drag strip. “I was born in 1965, which was just a few years before dad quit racing to work on building the company, but I can just barely remember going to the track with him when I was a real young kid, and I went with him on a regular basis until he retired from competition.” Over the course of the next 10 years or so, Moroso Performance Products continued to grow, and Rick, except for a brief stint behind the wheel of a go-kart in his early teens, pursued other interests besides racing. By the time he graduated from high school, however, it was time for him to make one of those life-altering decisions, one that would have far-reaching effects on his future course as an adult. In the long run, it was a decision he had no trouble making. “After I graduated from high school I decided not to go to college, and that was that. Dad wasn’t about to try and force the issue, so instead he said that if I wasn’t going to go on to college then I should come to work for the family business, which is what I really wanted to do anyway. At the age of 17, I started working as a welder, and eventually worked my way through every department in the company. “Over the next couple of years I worked in the sheet metal department, quality control, tech lines, sales, R&D, the engine shop and lots more,” Rick explained. “Of course, it was all part of my ongoing education, as I soon figured out. Dad was grooming me to take over the company at some point in the future.” Rick’s younger brother Rob was also being groomed by the elder Moroso, but his future lie not at the helm of the successful family business, but rather in the ranks of North America’s most popular form of motorsports competition, NASCAR stock car racing.
Rick and Rob both raced go-karts in their younger days, as mentioned,
but after Rick broke his leg falling out of a car, he hung up his
helmet. Rob keep on going around in circles, however, and by the
age of 16 he was competing in the NASCAR Busch Grand National Series
as well as the Charlotte/Daytona Dash Series, becoming the youngest
driver to ever win a race. In 1989, at the age of 21, Rob won the
Busch Grand National championship. He had great hopes and showed
great promise for his move to the then-NASCAR Winston Cup Series
in 1990, and was an odds-on favorite for the Rookie of the Year
title. While Rick never really developed the love for circle track and road course racing that his younger brother had, he did however have a real fondness for the sport of drag racing that his father introduced him to at a tender young age. Shortly after going to work at Moroso, his future hands-on involvement with the sport began to take shape, thanks to the venerable ’61 Corvette that his dad had raced so successfully all those years before.
The car sat in a corner of the Moroso shop for nearly 15 years, having only ventured out to the track a couple of times when Dick let a few friends take it racing. Once Rick started working at Moroso, however, it wasn’t long before the Honduran Maroon beauty was back in action on a full-time basis once again. “I asked my dad if he minded if a few of my buddies and I put the car back together and raced it, and he told me absolutely not,” Rick explained. “There was a blower motor from a street rod we had built sitting here at the shop, so we dropped that in, and then re-did the rest of the car. We put a new roll cage in it, installed new brakes and bigger tires, replaced the four-speed with a Powerglide, and replaced the original four-link with an updated four-link/coil-over suspension.” Once the car was ready to race again, Rick and his friends took it straight to the famous 5-day Bracket Championship event at the track owned by his family, Moroso Motorsports Park in West Palm Beach, Florida. He now candidly admits that this wasn’t the car to use or the place to go to learn how to drive, but perhaps a bit blinded by youthful enthusiasm, he threw caution to the wind and headed south. Fortunately, with discretion being the better part of valor, once he got down around Gainesville, Florida, he stopped at Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School, and took a few days of valuable instruction in the often tricky art of guiding a high-powered hot rod safely and quickly down the quarter-mile. By the time he left Hawley’s, Rick had successfully piloted the school’s Altered into the 8.60-second zone at over 160-mph, so he felt much better about jumping into the family’s prized heirloom once he got to West Palm Beach.
The week in Florida didn’t go as smoothly as anticipated, as Rick recalled. “Right off the trailer, I drove the car down the track real mellow-like the first time out, because I didn’t have my license yet. I drove it down again and got kind of used to it, building up the speed a bit until I felt comfortable. Finally, we decided to launch the car, and I was going to leave on the transbrake and then lift. It was a great plan, and everything went perfectly – I launched on the transbrake and lifted, but the throttle stuck open! I shoved it into neutral, and then back into gear before shutting it off. We averted disaster, but it really opened my eyes to just how fast things can go wrong. “We survived that little scare, fortunately, and even though
I lost in the first round every day of the event, I was hooked on
drag racing and ready to pick up the program as soon as I could,”
he said. “It didn’t take us long to build an improved
blower motor for the car, and we raced it that way for a while,
running 9.70s in bracket competition. Pretty soon I decided that
I wanted to go Super Gas racing, though, so we built an appropriate
engine and went out and had some fun.” “After a little while we brought the Corvette back out, this time with another blower motor bolted in and set-up with a throttle stop for the 10.90 NHRA Super Street class,” Rick said. “We did that for a little while, but we eventually went into what was at the time the National Muscle Car Association. My dad was good friends with John Diana, who worked for Peterson Publishing at the time they took over the organization in the name of Hot Rod magazine. John and my dad put together the rules for a class called Hot Street, which dad thought would be a perfect category for his old car to compete in.
“In 1998, we went out and finished runner-up the first time they ran the class, which was when the NMCA was experimenting with eighth-mile competition, by the way. Unfortunately, in November of that year, as we were celebrating the company’s 30th anniversary, my father lost a year-long battle with cancer.” Rick had been made president of Moroso Performance Products just a year earlier, so now it was up to him to carry on the Moroso family tradition of innovation, quality and integrity in the world of performance parts, while at the same time keeping the Moroso name in front of drag racing fans across the country. That next season he was back out with Dick’s beloved Corvette, and gearing up for a shot at a championship in Hot Street. Things didn’t go quite according to plan, however, as that runner-up finish the year before proved to be the only highlight in the Moroso Racing team’s logbook for quite a while. “Yeah - after that we never did anything very worthwhile for the next three or four seasons,” Rick said with an ironic laugh. “During that time we realized that dad’s car was starting to show signs of wear and tear, so I bought a new 2000 C5 Corvette, set it up for Hot Street and we carried on. We still weren’t able to do as well as we wanted to, so we decided to go to Tony Bischoff at BES Racing Engines in Indiana and have him build us a new engine. That was a real step in the right direction, and from that point on we really started to improve.”
After finishing ninth and fourth the two previous seasons, Moroso, Crew Chief Rob DeLella and Team manager Paul Minore finally put all the pieces together, and in 2002, the first year out with the Bischoff engine, they won the first two races of the season and went on to win the NMCA/NSCA Hot Street championship. “It was great to finally win a title, but all everyone wanted to know was where was my father’s car, what was I going to do with it, would I ever consider selling it and so on,” said Rick. “Of course I would never consider selling it, but we had so many people asking about it all the time that we decided that we had better bring it back out. We totally revamped the car again, and brought it back to the track towards the end of the 2003 season. “The car was happy to be back out again, I think, even though the competition in Hot Street probably wasn’t happy to see it. We went out and won the last two races of the season, and finished second in the points behind Tim Davis.”
After finishing strong last year, however, the 2004 season has had its share of frustrations for the Moroso team, as Rick explained. “So far, this season has been an up and down deal for us,” he said. “Sometimes we can do no wrong and other times that’s all we can do. We’re in second place in the points right now behind Larry Perkins, and he’s been real tough this season. He’s been racing for a lot of years, and he has a hell of a lot of experience. He’s just real good at what he does and right now he’s kicking our butt. We’ll have something for him at some point, though, because we’re constantly learning and making tweaks that will eventually give us the edge. We’re planning on closing out the season with a pair of wins, just like we did last year, and going for another championship in 2005.” In addition to his goal of winning another championship next season, Rick has another project on the go right now that will be of interest to a lot of people. This November, during the 5-Day Bracket Championships at Moroso Motorsports Park, Rick and his crew will hopefully be testing his new Super Street car. The car itself isn’t exactly new, but its configuration surely is. Since Rick’s 2000 Corvette C5 that he formerly campaigned in Hot Street is such a beautiful machine, it was only fitting that it be re-configured and brought back to the drag wars, which is exactly what’s going to happen in 2005. Rick is paying a great deal of attention to the details of the re-build, striving to maintain a stock appearance with the car wherever possible. For example, the original console is going back in, and the seats, while fabricated of sheet metal, will be upholstered with stock materials. Underneath, the chassis will be completely updated, and a roots-blown 427” small block powerplant will occupy the engine compartment. Asked why he’s adding a second, quicker car to his stable for next season, Moroso replied, “I really love Hot Street, and in the past I liked running in Super Gas and Super Comp, and while I found it all enjoyable, I just have the urge to go a little quicker. I don’t want to become a professional race driver because I don’t want to travel all over the country and never be home. I don’t have the desire to run 300 miles an hour in a Top Fueler or spend millions of dollars on a Pro Stock team. On the other hand, I am getting a little bored running 150 all the time. It’s fun and enjoyable and I love driving my dad’s old car, but I’d like to try something a little different next year. I’m not even sure just whet we’re going to do yet – maybe we’ll take one car to half the races and one to the other half.
“My goal right now is to go fast enough to scare myself but not fast enough to make me get out from behind the wheel. I want to go 200 miles an hour on the quarter-mile before I die, let’s put it that way. I can do 200 in my street car, but I want to do it on the ‘strip.” The street car that Rick refers to is a supercharged ’99 Corvette C5 GTR known as the “Black Menace.” This beautiful machine cranks out 617 horsepower at the flywheel, thanks to its blown and intercooled LS1 powerplant. With its custom interior, extra wide body, huge brakes and tires, this is one awesome hot rod. Rick is also currently in the process of building a ’68 Corvette for the street, this one is being built around a ZZ572 crate engine from GM performance Parts. Both cars are designed to be super-responsive on the twisty-turnies, fitting well into the so-called Pro Touring category of cars so popular with magazine editors these days. “My street cars have always been built this way, before there was even such a thing as Pro Touring,” Rick added. “I just like the low, fat-tire look, and I like fast cars that handle well.” For a guy who quit racing go-karts in his early ‘teens and
didn’t start racing “seriously” until he was nearly
20, it appears that Rick Moroso now has a real appreciation for
the satisfaction that finely-tuned cars can provide, as well as
a handle on the important things in life, thanks to some sometimes
tough but always valuable lessons learned along the way. And just
as he appreciates and cherishes the family traditions that led him
to the point he’s at today, he and his wife Lori are now building
a strong sense of tradition for their own young family to follow
in the future. Son Mathew, 6 and daughters Penelope, 4 and Olivia,
1 are the most important things in Rick’s life, of course,
and maybe, just maybe, thanks to the great example set by previous
generations, there’s a third-generation racer or two in the
making.
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