To enter the contest, Staropoli had submitted his racing résumé and the required self-produced video. It was a one-time opportunity to showcase his driving in front of NASCAR teams, sponsors, and fans, who would also see a video production of the event. “It was the single moment I’d been praying for my entire life,” Staropoli says. Staropoli, he announced, was one of nine finalists, chosen from 700 entrants, to compete in the Peak Stock Car Dream Challenge. On his smartphone screen was Michael Waltrip, a two-time winner of NASCAR’s Daytona 500 and owner of a team in the Sprint Cup (NASCAR’s highest level of racing, akin to organized baseball’s major leagues). While studying for final exams, he got a call that changed everything.
In the spring of 2013, he was contemplating a career in ophthalmology, which would enable him to race as an amateur in his spare time. During four years in Cambridge, he developed an interest in neurobiology and ultimately graduated summa cum laude, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and went straight to medical school at the University of Miami. The South Florida native is the first in his family to attend college. Undeterred-even by the fact that a crash at the legendary Hialeah Speedway seven years earlier had nearly killed his father-Staropoli and some friends repaired the car in time for him to run a few more races that summer before heading north for his freshman year at Harvard. His main concern was the mechanical damage: “It destroyed the whole front half of the car.” The third-generation racer later learned that the steering wheel had been improperly installed when he and his crew worked on the car only a few minutes before the crash. Staropoli limped away from the wreckage with minor bruises.
“I glanced up,” he recalls, “and an instant later I hit the wall.” Near the end of the corner, just as all seemed fine, the car’s steering wheel popped off and fell in his lap. A cacophonous roar filled the cockpit and the car shook from pure velocity, yet Staropoli stared down an approaching turn that required balancing the 1.5-ton car on the knife-edge of traction. Even on the tight track, he was traveling close to 100 miles per hour. In 2008, amateur racer Patrick Staropoli ’12 was blasting down the straightaway at Florida’s New Smyrna Speedway, strapped into a stock car.
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