Chicago, Ill. – One of the area’s true stock car racing legends, Tony Izzo passed away July 5 at his home in Homer Glen, Ill., at the age of 82. He had been battling pneumonia.
Izzo was truly the “King” of Chicagoland’s Santa Fe Speedway where he won nine late model season championships at the “Track of Clay.” He began his racing career at Santa Fe around 1964 in the track’s sportsman division, wheeling his No. 99 stock car. Izzo flipped the car one night and the 99s became 66s with the number “66” becoming his trademark.
Izzo won several sportsman feature races at Santa Fe in 1964. He worked for the Wabash Railroad and as a body man for the Trucky brothers, Bob and Ed, and drove their late model car one night in 1965 at Santa Fe. After that, track officials informed Izzo that he was a late model driver from now on.
Beginning to campaign his own late model, Izzo would tell the story about going to the railroad credit union to finance one of his early late model rides. He was ranked 19th in Santa Fe’s final late model standings both in 1966 and 1967. Izzo, racing out of Bridgeview, Ill., moved up to seventh in the final points at Santa Fe in 1968, racing against the likes of late model veterans Bill Van Allen, Don Waldvogel, Larry Jackson, Bob Kelly and Jim O’Connor.
Nicknamed “Shaggy” because of his rather long hair and sometimes ruffled appearance, Izzo began to win feature races on the Santa Fe quarter-mile. He claimed his first victory on Santa Fe’s half-mile clay oval in 1972. 1972 also saw Izzo win the late model crown at Illinois’s Kankakee Fairgrounds Speedway, introducing a short wheelbase Camaro to local dirt track racing.
Getting closer year after year including second in the points in 1974 and 1976, Izzo finally captured his first Santa Fe track championship in 1977. He repeated championships there again in 1978, 1979 and 1980. Listening to the cheers or boos, Izzo had become the “man to beat” at Santa Fe Speedway.
“When I got started, we were just having fun, riding around and bouncing off the fences,” Izzo once said. “But later, when we got caught up in the championship hype and all the prestige that went with it, we got serious.”
Another championship in 1980 was followed by five in a row – 1984 through 1988. The number “66” had gained legendary status. During this time, Izzo, always looking for the edge with different chassis and engines, also fielded late model cars at Santa Fe for a number of different drivers.
Izzo was a three-time winner of Santa Fe’s annual season-ending National Clay Track Championship 200, winning the event in 1974, 1977 and 1978, His 23-feature win season in 1985 was a Santa Fe Speedway record.
Izzo also raced a bit at area paved tracks, including the Rockford Speedway, Blue Island’s Raceway Park, Grundy County Speedway in Morris, Ill., and Indiana’s Illiana Motor Speedway. He won a late model main event at Grundy in 1979. In September of 1978, he surprised a lot of people by winning Illiana’s annual Tony Bettenhausen Memorial 100 lapper in a George Appleton chassis late model.
Izzo was the 1982 Central States Racing Association Busch Series dirt late model champion, winning several series events. Later, he was also a two-time winner in NASCAR Busch All-Star Tour action, grabbing wins at Santa Fe and at Illinois’ Sycamore Speedway.
After his driving career was over, Izzo, who owned a successful auto body shop in Chicago, promoted the dirt tracks at both Kankakee (1988 – 1999) and LaSalle, Ill., (1992 – 2002) and supported the racing efforts of his two sons, Tony Jr. and Joey.
Izzo was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in 2016 and into the Illinois Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2017.
Tony Izzo – a true Chicago area racing legend.