Mauro and Giovanni Trione will become the next father and son pairing to race together in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series after it was officially announced yesterday that the Trione’s will be sharing driving duties in the No. 31 CAAL Racing entry for the 2020 season.
The Trione’s will be the third father and son pairing to share a car together in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series. Bert and Stienes Longin became the first to do so after they shared the No. 11 PK Carsport together in 2014-2016, while the following year Hugo and Didier Bec would share the driving duties of the No. 8 RDV Competition entry.
Mauro will be entering his third season in the EuroNASCAR PRO class and is looking to improve on his results after 2019 proved to be an incident-filled season for the 56-year old Swiss-Italian driver.
“I want to keep improving my performance and score top-10 finishes constantly,” said Mauro to euronascar.com. “The new season will be more difficult when you look at the big names on the grid, but we moved in the right direction last year if you compare my lap times to those from 2018. Too many crashes hurt my score in the overall standings. This year, I want to grab the Challenger Trophy. In 2018 I was third, in 2019 I was second, so I know where I want to be in 2020.”
As for Giovanni, it will be his first full-season campaign in the EuroNASCAR 2 class after he competed in the regularity-based EuroNASCAR Club Challenge class for the last two years. Giovanni finished runner-up in last year’s Elite Club championship, narrowly losing to DF1 Racing’s Alain Mosqueron in the final round of the season at Zolder.
“My goals for the 2020 season is to enjoy the full NASCAR Whelen Euro Series experience in the EN2 championship,” said Giovanni on his incoming debut season in EuroNASCAR 2. “I want to have fun with the team and my friends at the track. I have no specific expectations but learning about the car and developing my racing style race by race.”
“It has been a dream for me since I was a kid. I always wanted to share a race car with him and while we did it already last year while I was competing in the Club Challenge, now we are fully connected by racing in the ENPRO and EN2 championships at all seven events across Europe. I’m really happy that everything worked out!”
“For my son, we have to see where he stands after the first races,” said Mauro on Giovanni’s EuroNASCAR 2 debut campaign this year. “He needs to learn quickly, because the EN2 championship is not the Club Challenge. He is a very intelligent guy and I’m sure he will use this opportunity to improve race after race. With three full races under his belt, he will surely have a completely different approach when we head to Vallelunga in Italy.”
Mauro also shared some of his stories with Giovanni on his interview to euronascar.com, such as how Giovanni was born when Mauro was testing a Ferrari F40 at Imola and credited Giovanni’s years as a college golf player at Queens University of Charlotte for introducing him to NASCAR.
“Giovanni was born in 1994 and I was in Imola that week testing the Ferrari F40. I left Imola immediately to go to the hospital in Bari and a few days after my wife left the hospital, I was back on the track for racing. It was not easy but I went around in the pits with a photo of little Giovanni in my hand that I showed everyone with pride. In 1995, I was on the podium in a Superturismo race in Italy and he was with me. I stopped racing after this success.”
“Usually children find themselves competing in the same sport as their parents, but Giovanni followed that path when I started playing golf after quitting racing. He played College Golf in the US, at the Queens University of Charlotte, in the heart of NASCAR. When I decided to start racing again in 2018, I owed him… that was the time his dream of racing came true.”
Mauro also said that the opportunity to race together with Giovanni will be a special opportunity for him as Mauro reveals that he was diagnosed with cancer in the middle of the 2018 season. He has since made a full recovery after undergoing two surgeries to remove the cancer.
“Personally, it’s so special to have him with me in the team. In 2018, right after Tours, I was diagnosed with a bad cancer and I had two surgeries. Now I’m okay and I see life in a different way and this experience with my son is a special one. Time doesn’t come back and we need to live as many experiences as possible together, who knows what’s next?”
Disclaimer: Unless noted, all photos used in this article are courtesy of NASCAR Whelen Euro Series / Bart Dehaese.