The Patriarch of Pocono

Joe “Doc” Mattioli is a man of passion. The one-time Philadelphia dentist, 76 years old and still toiling daily at his beloved speedway, has a number of loves. Foremost among them is his wife, constant companion and business partner, Rose, also a dentist. In this interview with Stock Car Racing, Mattioli talks about his Pocono International Raceway, his offspring, the people he’s met through racing, his boat, giving away money and even the bulldozer with which he’s personally shaped much of the raceway property, Mattioli’s route to becoming the chief executive officer of one of NASCAR’s most successful speedways started almost on a whim. But no one can doubt his commitment to Pocono. And no one can tell him how to run his speedway.

SCR: How did you get from the dentist office to Pocono?

Joe Mattioli: In October of 1960, I had to operate alone on two patients and when it was over, I had the shakes. I’d been practicing eight years, seven days a week, and had made a lot of money but I had no life. I said ‘the hell with it’ and from that day on, I didn’t do anything I didn’t enjoy. I learned how to fly, ski, sail—all things I’d wanted to do. I took a year off, then invested in Camelback Ski Area and other Pocono businesses.

One day when I’d flown into the Poconos, an old gentleman I’d met in the airport tried to con me into investing in a project up here. Just to get rid of him, I gave him my card and told him to let me know when he had his next meeting. Lo and behold, six weeks later he called me, I came up and I got involved. It’s been said that I got in on the ground floor but that’s not true. There wasn’t any ground. I had to buy it. They’d optioned the land but they didn’t have any money so I had to guarantee the mortgage and ended up paying it off. The track wasn’t my idea, I just got sucked in through the back door because I knew it was a good buy on the land. All the money I’d made off my other Pocono businesses went into the racetrack.

SCR: Most CEOs are very impressed with themselves. You’re not.

JM: Actually, I am (laugh). I’ve got a double-wide trailer here that my wife and I live in. My mother was ashamed, she didn’t want me to tell anybody I lived in a trailer but we’ve been here for 20 years. It’s part of our modular office complex and the second turn is only 100 yards from my bedroom. I think that’s pretty good. People think I must have another place hidden away up here but I don’t. I’ve still got the place in Philly where we started that my wife won’t sell and I’ve got my boat. I love boats. I’ve got a little 50 footer and I go back and forth from Philly to Florida.

SCR: Some speedway CEOs worry about stock prices. What do you worry about?

JM: I don’t worry about a thing! The only stockholders I have are four friends I’ve kept with me since the beginning. They only have two percent each, so my family holds 92 percent of the corporation. I do things my way. I told my family ‘The day I die, that’ll be the day I retire. Then it’s yours. You go till you die and do it the way you want, then your kids can take over.’

We went public in 1965 and I had 800 stockholders. It’s taken me 35 years to buy everybody out. I don’t like having stockholders. We made a lot of mistakes the first time around. It took me 20 years just to realize all our mistakes, so I started tearing everything down, very quietly, and piece by piece we’ve rebuilt everything. We’ve spent an average of $3 million dollars for the last 10 years. Every year there’s something. Today, Pocono Raceway is the most modern track in the country. There are a lot of tracks—Las Vegas, Fontana, Texas—that are big, beautiful places but this track works the best for the participants and the fans. It’s simple and it’s fan-friendly.

SCR: Many say you’ve got the best fan area in NASCAR.

JM: We rebuilt the whole garage area for the fans, not the racers. They can come into the middle of the area without actually being in the garage or pits. There’s a 150-foot strip that’s 1,400 feet long with the garages on one side and the pits on the other. They’re 50 feet from guys changing spark plugs. It started with Autograph Alley. I took my kids to see the Howdy Doody show many years ago and they had the Peanut Gallery. The kids loved it so I remembered and later on built a Peanut Gallery for the fans. I’ve got 700 feet of wrought iron fence to pass things through and drivers who walk by can sign autographs for five or 10 minutes or keep on walking. The drivers say they’re comfortable with the fans watching and we had so many people along the fence that we built three risers so three times as many people can see well. The mechanics are really good too. They’ll give spark plugs to the kids, they’ll sign autographs, they’ll stand and talk to the people. With the one-way traffic in the garage, every car has to go by that point so everyone’s favorite goes by within 10 feet of the fence and people get great close-up shots.

I design everything myself. I’ve got a big table here where I work. I do it to scale, then I hire architects and engineers to develop it. We started from the core and built out. Now I’m into the parking lots. We’re working on a direct connection off I-80 right onto our property for use on race day and I’ve started clearing land for a museum. I bought some land across the street, put in 11, five-acre parking lots and a mile and a half road right to the interstate.

SCR: How many seats have you added?

JM: I added 5,000, then another 5,000, then I got tired of adding 5,000 and put in 15,000. I got scared then, thinking I’d overbuilt, but we sold out so two years later we put in another 17,000: 15,000 regular seats and 2000 club seats. We’ve more than doubled our seating capacity.

SCR: You also have racing’s biggest bathroom.

JM: I wanted to build new bathrooms but more than that, I wanted to build a midway between the stands and the toilet facility. I wanted to have the ambiance of the state fair or the Kentucky Derby, not a modern brick or stone building. I wanted a place for bands, jugglers, clowns and all sorts of food, just like at the old-time fairs. To get that look, I put up the biggest bathroom in the world. It has 1,000 stalls and services 20,000 people an hour. I overbuilt but now there are no lines, so they come out and go to the food stands.

SCR: Most speedways have title sponsors for their events. Why not Pocono?

JM: We lost our identity for about 25 years. We had beautiful relationships with Schaefer Beer, Miller, and Purolator but it got so you had so many titled 500’s that nobody knew where they were. Today, there’s no way I’d give my identity away for the money companies would pay. When you say Pocono 500 or Pennsylvania 500, you know where it is. Our ticket sales built up immediately and both the state and our Pocono neighbors love it. The governor has been here for four of the last six years, the Pennsylvania Lottery came to us and does a big promotion here. It’s been great.

SCR: We hear a lot from Winston Cup fans about high-priced seats and camping.

JM: We get the ticket prices of every track in the country and go right in the middle. We don’t want to be low, we don’t want to be high. Our RV sites are priced the same way. I have an argument with people who complain about ticket prices. Our highest price tickets are sold out first. People don’t want cheap seats.

We have 8,000 people in club seats. They pay anywhere from $200 to $375 a ticket and you can’t just buy a ticket, you have to inherit one. They get food, beverages and a pit pass for three days and that’s the best buy in racing. Other places like to have all sorts of corporate skyboxes but I don’t. I sell mine to individual people. The only corporate entity we have is RJR. Our other seats cost from $40 to $80 and in today’s world, that’s not an overpriced ticket.

Camping is the same. We’ve got everything from one day with no amenities to four day reserved inside the track.

SCR: You and Bob Bahre at New Hampshire are the only independent track left.

JM: Yeah, it’s going down fast. People wonder if we’ll sell out, but the track is left in trust. We don’t owe a penny, I’ve got money in the bank and we’re going to do whatever we want to do. We don’t have the stockholders to answer to and if we didn’t make 10 cents this year, I wouldn’t have any complaints.

SCR: Haven’t you been tempted to take a pile of money and sit on it?

JM: Not a bit. I made a statement a couple of years ago that if a guy came down through the garage area with a billion dollars in a wheelbarrow, I’d show him the gate. I’ve got no interest in money. I’ve got more than I’ve ever needed or wanted and over the past few years, I’ve been giving it away in leaps and bounds. I support many auto racing charities—MRO, the Winston Cup Wives, the Checkered Flag Fan Club, the Hall of Fame at Talladega—but 90 percent of it goes right here in Monroe County. We have Mattioli scholarships at the five high schools in the county and we give the valedictorian $6,000 and the salutatorian $4,000. I’m trying to teach my kids how to give money away. They didn’t like it at first but now we give away three or four thousand every week of the year. I’m having more fun giving it away than I ever had saving it.

SCR: Any worries about losing dates?

JM: I’ve always said that nobody promised you tomorrow, but NASCAR isn’t built that way. The guy that saved me was this guy on my wall—Big Bill France. He and Bill Jr. convinced me not to sell the place. Then he gave me a second race. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. NASCAR and the France family have been very good to me.

SCR: People say you’re out in the woods and a track in New Jersey would ruin you.

JM: We’re in the highest population density of any racetrack in the country, within 400 miles of 60 million people. People don’t realize that we’re 90 miles from the George Washington Bridge, 90 minutes from Philadelphia and that we share the number-one TV market, New York City, with number four, Philadelphia.

There are a lot of people in New Jersey so it might work, but the traffic and the parking would be the hard part. As far as we’re concerned, Dover and Richmond started selling out because of us. We developed the fans in this area that go to Dover and Richmond. When they added Watkins Glen and New Hampshire, people thought we’d get mad but that was the best thing that ever happened to us. We get more people from up that way and that’s helped us sell out every race.

SCR: Speaking of people, you’ve met a lot of famous people through Pocono.

JM: I’ve been friends with all the drivers, the car owners, the track owners and all sorts of business people. A.J. Foyt and I both love bulldozers and every time we run into each other, we talk about clearing land. To me, that’s a good day at work, spending eight or 10 hours out on my dozer clearing and grading parking lots.

The relationship that meant the most was with Bill France. In his latter years, I never saw Bill at any other track but when he knew we were in trouble, he and Anne came up here three years in a row, just to be here and show support for us. It meant an awful lot.

SCR: You’re very seldom seen without Rose at your side.

JM: We’re together all the time and we got to where we are together. Rose handles all the hospitality and when I die, she’ll take over. When she goes, the kids will run the speedway. She’s built up the Ladies Lounge in the garage area and she’s really close to the families. We go to all the weddings and the funerals because she is so involved with the families of the drivers and owners.

I’ve even got 124 full hook-up RV sites next to the garage area and the only thing close is at Talladega. That came about because the wives told Rose they couldn’t take showers with the limited water supply they had on board. That campground was a gift to Rose and her wives. We also put in a little track there because the drivers celebrate Father’s Day here. We have little electric cars for the kids to drive, and we have a big celebration.