For veteran road racer Anthony Simone, 2019 is a year of change. In the offseason Simone announced he would be moving from his own race team in the No. 95, to the new No. 1 Silverline Tools Dodge for CBRT.
“Over the winter, CBRT told me about the opportunity of driving for them,” Simone said. “I feel it was great to come together with Mopar and getting to run the new M1 engine. I had a contact from a supplier to provide the funding. Silverline Tools made it happen and that kind of helped everything fall into place.”
The move from his own team to a factory team over at CBRT gives Simone the opportunity to run his first full season since 2010. It also gives the Holland Landing, Ontario driver the chance to focus on what he does best – racing.
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“I just thought just being able to concentrate on going to the track and focusing on driving and what I had to do behind the wheel instead of you know, 100 other things that happened on a race day,” said Simone. “I’m just concentrating on continuing with our good runs, we’ve shown strength in the first few races just getting the finishes to solidify our cars that we’ve had this year.”
While running his own NASCAR race team for the better part of a decade was a rewarding experience for Simone, a lot of fans might not understand just what it takes to field a contending race team. The behind the scenes work that is required to even get the car out to the track is something that Simone’s family had been in charge of, now Simone doesn’t take that experience for granted.
“The biggest difference is all the paperwork leading up to a race registration, with your sign in the morning, getting all the guys organized, making sure everybody’s got their stuff to get the track and everybody’s bags are in the trailer loading the truck,” said Simone. “Preparing the week or two weeks prior getting the car ready. All that kind of stuff is a lot of work and a lot of time and we work together as together as a family out at the shop my mom, my dad, my wife, but it does take a lot of time.”
When not racing you can usually still find Simone at the race track. Simone’s son Rocco has started his karting career and at the age of five had already shown both massive success and improvement.
“He just turned five and now he is running with the seven, eight, nine year old kids up to 12 years old,” Simone said. “He’s really learning a lot this year racing with the older kids and he’s already won a few races he’s doing unbelievably well at just five years old, he’s really improved a lot.”
“He’s getting better every day, I have him on the track almost every day. The more time the better at that age. I really love that it’s something he loves and something we can both do together.”
With the Budweiser 300 at Autodrome Chaudeire on the horizon, it will mark Simone’s 80th career NASCAR start. Simone is poised to give the No.1 Dodge a good run on the tight confines of Vallee-Jonction. He last took on the famous lime-green walls back in 2016 and is excited to return and contend for his first career win.
“I’ve run well at Chaudiere before and it’s a strong track,” Simone said. “I like the track and I think it’s a challenging place. We have high expectations for Chaudiere and we want to get a good finish.”
