Bob Vitari & Vic Bombaci

Hailing from Essex, CT, Bob Vitari & Vic Bombaci got their illustrious racing career started at the Waterford Speedbowl back in the 1950’s. After visiting Speedbowl victory lane with Gene White in the mid-1950’s, they changed drivers to Bill Slater in the middle of the 1958 season, and both the team and driver would reach new heights of Modified racing at the Speedbowl and beyond.

They won together immediately, winning a handful of races to finish out the 1958 season, including 2 of the last 3, and then came back in 1959 to dominate the Modified division. They won 15 races together that year, including three 50 lappers and 3 straight at one point in the season. They won the 1959 Speedbowl Modified Championship. They would win 25 races with Slater at the Speedbowl from 1958-1961.

For 1960, Slater started at the Speedbowl winning 3 of the first 4 races before heading to Norwood Arena for the rest of the season in a brand new V-8 coupe. Yet at the Speedbowl, they put Don Collins behind the wheel of the old car to finish the season. Collins would go onto to have the most dominate season of his career, winning a record 17 races as a driver and 20 total for the V-8 car. Collins also won a record 5 straight features, including two on June 4th (Collins also won a Non-Ford race that day).

Moving onto Norwoord Arena, where they won an incredible 6 more championships, Vitari & Bombaci’s V-8 was affectionately dubbed “The Connecticut Valley Rocket” and became one of the more iconic Modified race cars of the 1960’s in northeast. While they’re time at the Speedbowl may have been short, their car won an incredible 40 of the 64 races (63%) it entered from when Slater first joined in August 1958 til the end of the 1960 season with Collins driving.

The duo was inducted into the NEAR Hall of Fame in 2006. Vic Bombaci passed away on February 2, 2008, while Bob Vitari lived to the age of 95, passing away on June 19, 2025.

STATISTICAL SNAPSHOT

BOB VITARI & VIC BOMBACI
SPEEDBOWL PHOTO ALBUM