When you learn that T.J. Zizzo drives a Top Fuel dragster while managing a thriving body shop as a day job, you might think racing is nothing more than a hobby. After all, it can be tough to compete without consistency. Being successful in any motorsport is about practice, sharp reaction times, and constantly working to shave fractions of a second off elapsed time.
But if you think T.J. Zizzo does anything — be it business or racing — without an expectation of winning, then you don’t know T.J. Zizzo.
“Our employees understand that if it’s not Zizzo-worthy, it doesn’t go out the door,” he says. “My dad and I coined that phrase a long time ago, and if it’s not Zizzo-worthy, it doesn't leave.”
That goes for the dragster, too. As a part-time team, Zizzo doesn’t get nearly the reps that his competitors do. The teams competing for the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) championship each year spend countless hours working at the shop, testing at the track, and using every run of every race of the season as data to make their cars incrementally better with each lap.
In the 2025 season, Zizzo ran three races. His first came at his home track in Joliet, Illinois, just over an hour’s drive from Zizzo Auto Body in Lincolnshire. That was in May, and Zizzo didn’t make another pass in the car until September in Indianapolis at the U.S. Nationals, the biggest event in all of drag racing. And what happened? In the first run of qualifying, Zizzo ran a career best, 3.695 seconds at 333.08 miles per hour.
That’s Zizzo-worthy.
The Family Business
Zizzo has been around body shops and race cars his entire life. He was born in 1975, and his dad, Tony, started the business in 1980. He recalls painting his first Tonka truck at the age of 5. “My mom still has pictures of it,” he says.
Growing up, Zizzo dabbled in working at the shop, which started in the family garage, then went away to college and got an engineering degree. His professors encouraged him not to go back to the body shop, to go work for a large company like John Deere or Caterpillar and put his degree to use. Zizzo went back after graduation in 1997, intending to work at the shop for a couple months and see how it went.
“The second day I started, [my dad] went to go visit his mom and my grandma in Sicily and didn't return for, like, months,” Zizzo recalls. “He was like, ‘OK, here’s the keys.’ … 27, 28 years later, I’m still working for him.”
Part of the reason Zizzo was drawn to the shop world is the opportunity and flexibility it gave him to pursue racing. Tony Zizzo was a racer too, competing in Top Alcohol dragster in the 1980s. That was T.J.’s entry into the sport as well, before the team decided to go Top Fuel racing in the early 2000s.
Lessons Learned
For the uninitiated, a Top Fuel dragster is better felt than explained. Ground-shakingly loud and ungodly quick, they are the fastest race cars in the world. The national speed record was set last year by Brittany Force at 343.51 miles per hour. Powered by explosive nitromethane, these engines last for only one 1,000-foot race at a time—and frequently blow up before they even make it that far.
It’s an adrenaline junkie’s game, to be sure, and Zizzo certainly appreciates the thrill of going faster than just about any driver on the planet. But the sport holds plenty of other appeal to him, too. Chief among them is the people.
Just because the car isn’t on the racetrack doesn’t mean Zizzo’s team is idle. The men and women of Zizzo Racing work behind the scenes ensuring the car will be ready to go when the time comes. One member of the team even pulls double duty working on the race car and in the body shop.
“My dad tells people all the time, just because we’re not at the racetrack doesn’t mean we’re not doing our homework, Zizzo says. “And that's why we can go out there and be successful. And I’m just a small little piece of that. I just try to keep the thing straight, that’s about it. I do a decent job of that.”
I am a stickler on the way our race car goes together. And I’m a stickler on the way our customer cars go together. — T.J. Zizzo, Top Fuel Racer and manager of Zizzo Auto Body
He also takes lessons from the race car that make him a better body shop manager, and vice versa. Zizzo Auto Body specializes in high-end vehicles—Ferraris, maybe the occasional Koenigsegg. Quality and details are everything, and being “Zizzo-worthy” is a requirement.
“I am a stickler on the way our race car goes together,” Zizzo says. “And I’m a stickler on the way our customer cars go together. The fasteners that come out, they need to be put back in. This needs to look like a factory job. This needs to look like it came out of the showroom, the orange peel needs to match. No compound in the jambs, nothing. I want this thing to be right. So, I think all those things correlate to doing good things in our body shop and good things on a race team.”
The Future
When rival teams see the name Zizzo on the entry list, they know what to expect, Zizzo says. It may have been months since the car was on the track, but competitors know they won’t be racing against just any part-time operation. Zizzo went on to qualify third at the 2025 U.S. Nationals, following up 2024, when he was the top qualifier at two of the four events the team entered. There is just one thing missing on the resume.
“The only thing I’ve never won in is Top Fuel at an NHRA event,” says Zizzo. “That’s the only thing I’ve never won at. And when we win, I can guarantee you, the fans will f—ing erupt. There is no doubt my mind.”
Zizzo admits that lately he has begun to feel his age when getting in the car (it’s worth noting that 50 is nothing in the drag racing world; reigning series champ Doug Kalitta turns 62 this season), but instead of pulling away, he’s dedicated himself to getting better. Better shape, working on his breathing, even seeing a sports psychologist at the suggestion of competitor Justin Ashley, who is known for his near-superhuman reaction times off the starting line.
This is all while continuing to grow Zizzo Auto Body. Tony, at 75, still owns the business, which is now 20,000 square feet including the race shop. Zizzo says his father is in the shop more than he is, and Zizzo limits his work weeks to 65 hours. Tony lives 1 mile away from the shop, T.J. a half-mile further, in the town he was born and raised in. Both Zizzo men think another shop expansion could be in the works in the near future as they consistently are over capacity and have to turn down work.
The shop has certainly grown over the years, but in 46 years of operation, it’s been done at a steady pace. Zizzo preaches the importance of patience, perhaps surprising coming from a man who lives to go fast on the drag strip. But he understands the body shop is one place where rushing doesn’t always get you to the finish line first.
“Bodywork is all about patience,” Zizzo says. “And, certainly the hard work side of it, certainly there is nothing easy with a Top Fuel dragster. And there’s nothing easy in our business on the body shop side.”
Zizzo makes a career-best 3.695-second, 333 mph lap at the 2025 U.S. Nationals.
About the Author
Todd Kortemeier
Todd Kortemeier is former editor of FenderBender magazine and started writing as a contributor in 2024.