Vito Cancilla, age 12, wins Pro Late Model feature at Madera, Calif.
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (March 21 2024) – Nearly 70 years after West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Famer Cos Cancilla won a NASCAR West championship as a car owner, his great grandson has made history at Madera (Calif.) Speedway.
Vito Cancilla, at age 12, won the March 16 Madera Speedfest to become the third-mile paved oval’s youngest Pro Late Model champion. The sixth grade student at Contra Costa Christian school earned $5,000. The Martinez, Calif. resident was the track’s 2023 51FIFTY Jr Late Model Stock champion.
Cancilla, age 12 years six, months of age, bested the track’s earlier youngest top division winner, current NASCAR Cup Series competitor Cole Custer. The now-Stewart Haas Racing’s Custer was 14 years, four months of age with his May 2012 victory.
Cos Cancilla, who lived in Concord, Calif., raced midget cars before and after World War II, before deciding to become a stock car owner and crew chief. His drivers included West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Famers Jim Cook, Danny Letner, Hershel McGriff and Parnelli Jones, among others.
Cancilla’s greatest season, 1955, saw Letner win the NASCAR West title in an Oldsmobile. Letner won three times, twice at Western Speedway in Los Angeles and in Tucson, Ariz. Cancilla continued in NASCAR until shortly before his death in 1979 at age 65.
Ken Clapp, West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame Chairman and CEO became a member of Cancilla’s pit crew as a 15-year-old high school student. Clapp credits Cancilla with providing him an interest in the racing industry – in which he has owned race tracks and served as a NASCAR Vice President.
“Without him, I probably wouldn’t have gone ahead in this sport,” Clapp said of Cancilla, a 2001 inaugural inductee into the West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame.
Kenny Shepherd, operator of Madera Speedway with his wife, Tammy, continue to invest in the 51FIFTY Jr Late Model series which brings in young competitors from throughout the state and the western United States.
“Our mission has been to build the future stars of NASCAR in our 51FIFTY Jr Late Model Series from the Madera Speedway,” said Shepherd. “Kurt Busch had an opportunity to move up to the Craftsman Truck Series the year after I finished second to him in the 1999 NASCAR Southwest Tour championship, and from that experience and watching the Kurt Busch story unfold, I began to envision a youth program that would train the future stars of our sport and to ensure that there would be another motorsports glass slipper that would fit on a youngster from the west coast.”
Jesse Love, the 2023 ARCA national champion and current NASCAR Xfinity Series competitor with Richard Childress Racing, is also a graduate of the 51FIFTY Jr Late Model program.
About the West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame:
The West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame was conceived in 2001 as a means of recognizing significant contributors and contributions to the sport of stock car/motorsports competition. The mission of the West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame is founded to preserve history and heritage of the important role west coast stock car and motorsports figures have played in the sport’s development and continuation and to recognize, through annual enshrinement, of outstanding individuals and groups within the sport such as, but not limited to, designers, engineers, mechanics, drivers, race track owners, promoters, publicists and members of the motorsports media.
The Hall is a 501(c)3 charitable organization, dedicated to supporting a variety of organizations and groups from coast to coast. The Hall has raised more than $720,000 during the past six years for youth, health and safety, hospitals, animal rescue, military and other charitable causes.
For more information on the West Coast Stock Car/Motorsports Hall of Fame visit: www.WestCoastStockCarHallofFame.com
Media Contact:
Owen A. Kearns
okearns@bak.rr.com
661-342-2983