Wise Beyond His Years

Subtitle:Young Team Manager Bortolotti Led Pfaff To Title Season In 2015

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (Feb. 12, 2016) – Steve Bortolotti stood in the winner’s circle at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park last August, beaming amid a mixture of champagne spray, summer sunshine and a sense of accomplishment.

Pfaff Motorsports drivers Chris Green and Orey Fidani had just clinched the respective Platinum Cup and Gold Cup drivers’ championships in the Ultra 94 Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Yokohama. Pfaff also won the Gold Cup Team Championship. The three titles were the first for Pfaff Motorsports since 1988, and they came in Bortolotti’s first year as team manager.

Green and Fidani’s titles and the team title were the pinnacle so far of a unique journey for Bortolotti. He’s only 26, younger than many drivers in the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA)-sanctioned Single-Make Series and half the age of some other team managers in the series.

But Bortolotti, from Toronto, used a spartan work ethic and a quiet knack for leadership despite his young age to help lead Pfaff to its most successful season since Scott Goodyear won the Rothmans Porsche Turbo Cup series in 1988, the team’s last title.

The success in 2015 was the culmination of a rapid rise for a young man who started with the company in 2012 as an intern, updating the websites of Pfaff Automotive Group’s many thriving auto dealerships in the Toronto area.

“I think it’s a benefit, to be honest,” Bortolotti said of his young age compared to his peers. “I love being able to relate to the drivers. In terms of other managers, I think the fact that I’m younger than them makes them underestimate how much I know and how much I understand. When we are talking, I think I catch a lot of them off guard: ‘Hey, this guy knows what he’s talking about or he’s not as young as he looks.’”

Bortolotti always was interested in cars as a youth. He took a Mazda RX-8 to autocross and time attack events when he was 17, sewing the seeds of his racing passion.

But Bortolotti also played many other sports, including hockey and baseball. His parents supported all of his sports pursuits but made it clear they couldn’t pay for racing and stick-and-ball sports. So Bortolotti stuck with rubber pucks instead of rubber tires.

“As a Canadian, you want to play hockey and go to the NHL,” Bortolotti said.

But the embers of Bortolotti’s desire to find a career path in motorsports were stoked when he began a co-op at Pfaff Automotive Partners as a college student in 2012. He worked in digital marketing, including updating websites.

When his co-op ended, Bortolotti was desperate to continue working for Pfaff. So he talked his way into a part-time job as a sales assistant at Pfaff Porsche. He started at the bottom, photographing new cars and marketing the dealership’s new car inventory.

“I essentially created a job with the company because I didn’t want to leave,” Bortolotti said.

The desire he showed in that part-time, entry-level position led Bortolotti to a full-time role in April 2014 as a sales consultant at Pfaff Tuning, the performance arm of the company that upgrades a wide variety of cars from many premium import manufacturers, including Porsche.

That job also provided Bortolotti a chance to join Pfaff Motorsports. The team had competed the previous Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada season in a partnership with Alegra Motorsports but decided in 2014 to return to its solo roots. Team manager Jimmy Vervitas needed fresh, dedicated help – a perfect match for Bortolotti.

Bortolotti handled a wide variety of jobs in 2014 for the team, which fielded a Platinum Cup car that season for Green. He quietly padded his knowledge and experience base by turning wrenches, cleaning wheels and brakes, helping on the setup pad and more. There was no job too small, no hour too late.

Vervitas’ role at Pfaff Tuning grew in early 2015, forcing him to step away from the race team just as it was expanding to add a Gold Cup car for rookie Orey Fidani. But Vervitas didn’t need to look far to fill his vacancy. A full season of devoted, smart work – combined with his sales and marketing nous – made Bortolotti the ideal replacement despite his young age, and Vervitas and Green recommended him to Pfaff Automotive Partners President and CEO Chris Pfaff for the job.

“I’m really grateful to Chris, Jimmy and Mr. Pfaff for putting so much faith in me,” Bortolotti said. “I think my versatility has been my best quality my entire life. I’ve never shied or back down from a challenge.”

The challenges were numerous for Bortolotti at the start of last season. The second car for Fidani added technical and logistical complexity. Plus there was the unique blend of personalities and experience between Green and Fidani that Bortolotti needed to manage – despite being younger than both drivers.

Green finished second in the 2013 and 2014 Platinum Cup seasons despite having the heaviest accelerator foot in the series. Small mistakes and a touch of impatience had cost Green both years.

Fidani was entering his first year at the semi-professional level last season with only one other year of circuit competition.

A delicate touch was needed inside the Pfaff trailer. Green was a mustang who needed his reins pulled every so often; Fidani was a colt who needed to learn how to run.

“With Orey, it was: ‘Push, push, push, you can go faster. The car will stick. You can trust the car,’” Bortolotti said. “It was almost virtually the complete opposite with Chris. With Chris, it was: ‘Slow down, take it easy. The season is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Bortolotti managed both drivers beautifully, and the results flowed.

Green won the first two rounds of the season in May at Canadian Tire Motorsport Park and then heeded Bortolotti’s sermons of patience until winning his first Platinum Cup title at the season finale in August at CTMP by five points over Daniel Morad of Porsche Centre Oakville/Alegra Motorsports.

“Chris is a hard-charging driver,” Bortolotti said. “He’s a guy who wants to go out there every session and be the fastest driver in qualifying, turn the fastest race lap and win the race. I think that’s what the major difference was in his first two full years in Platinum Cup: He wasn’t thinking big picture like he did in 2015.

“With Chris this year, it was all about big-picture thinking. What’s our goal this season? Our goal is the championship. How do we achieve that goal? There were some moments where I know he wanted to kill me, but we were friends long before we worked together.”

Fidani sought and absorbed every piece of advice he could find, starting at the season-opening weekend. He and Green spent hours in the Pfaff transporter watching video and analyzing eye-melting lines of telemetry data, with Green immediately savoring his role as tutor and friend for Fidani.

That willingness to learn – combined with a composed driving style – helped Fidani hold off hard-charging Michael de Quesada of Porsche Centre Oakville/Alegra Motorsports to win the Gold Cup title by just two points.

“I never had to ask Orey and Chris to go into a room together and study data,” Bortolotti said. “That made my life a lot easier because Chris really did embrace that role as a coach to Orey, and then Orey embraced the opportunity to race with an experienced driver like Chris.”

That communal spirit was common throughout 2015 under Bortolotti’s leadership. He continued to do just as much “grunt work” as team manager last season as he did as a mechanic for the small, tight-knit team in 2014. The crew noticed, and the passion and enthusiasm were contagious.

“It was people,” Bortolotti said about the team’s secret to success. “Every single member of the team was engaged. Every single member of the team was working toward the same goal.

“Everybody knew how bad Pfaff wanted this championship. Everyone knew how badly Chris wanted this championship. Everyone wanted to see Orey become successful in his first season. Everyone was working toward the same goal.

“Any time I needed some help at the shop, I would send one text message out, ‘Hey, I could really use some help unloading the trailer,’ and the whole team would be there. I had to buy them all pizza, but at the end of the day, there was never a time where I was pulling teeth to get people engaged. We had people engaged from the first test at Sebring all the way through to clinching the championship at Mosport.”