3/11/2025
Are you an SCCA volunteer who wants to volunteer at an IMSA race? The tale that follows ultimately directs you to scca.com/trackside where you can begin your professional marshaling adventure, and it does so through the eyes of long-time SCCA® member and Florida resident Paul Soriano. Paul’s happy to tell you exactly how (and he’s an incredible storyteller) he worked his way to the race marshaling big leagues.
The career Navy veteran (now retired) is tireless and has become something of a Central Florida Region (CFR) folk hero, a staple at CFR’s Daytona International Speedway hub.
Growing up, Soriano was into cars only in the sense of “car” being a big V8 – “I’ve always been a quarter-mile, muscle car guy. Let’s go fast [in a straight line]!” His then-college-age son Nicholas, though, introduced him to the Sports Car Club of America®.
“We transferred down here from New Jersey in the early ’90s,” Soriano remembers, “and I took Nick to the Rolex [IMSA’s annual Daytona 24 Hour race] a few times growing up. One day in 2012, 2013, when he was in college at UCF, he said, ‘Dad, I’d like to see what this SCCA stuff’s all about.’
“I had no idea what ‘S-C-C-A’ even stood for, but I said, ‘All right, let’s go.’ We went to a Club event, and I couldn’t believe it; we just drove right in through the tunnel. ‘This is crazy,’ I thought. ‘We’re in the Daytona infield!’
“Right away we met the Paddock Marshall, Charlie Leonard,” Soriano says, “and I said, ‘Look, I don’t know the first thing about this sport. I have no idea what all those letters on the side of the car mean. But [pointing to his son] he’s interested.’
“Charlie’s a great guy, still around, still a friend. He puts us in a golf cart and brings us over to the garages, starts talking about Mazda Miatas – ‘Spec Miata is the most popular class,’ he says. ‘Very good entry level, but it’s competitive at all levels, whether you’re in the front or the back of the field, you’re racing with somebody.
“Well, I wasn’t real keen on Miatas at the time. I’m a muscle car guy…”
Reeling Them In
“Anyway, we started going to all the CFR events at Daytona. We met the folks in tech that I still know to this day. Nick wanted to drive, but he was going to graduate at the end of 2013 and I told him racing was not going to get in the way of that.
“But one day he called me up and goes, ‘Dad, I found a Spec Miata here near school. It’s like 6,500 bucks and it’s got a logbook. It’s an NA Miata, and it’s only been to Drivers’ School.’
“It was Smurf blue with a white racing stripe,” Soriano explains. “And I’m like, ‘No way.’ But he goes on: ‘Dad, this is pretty cool. 6,500 bucks. It’s got everything.’
“So…we go and buy this car. Nick goes to Drivers’ School at Sebring, he’s pretty good, we made some more friends.”
Eventually, Nick would qualify for and enter the SCCA National Championship Runoffs® in 2015 at Daytona and 2017 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Following up on an invite from another SCCA acquaintance, driver and coach Mark Dana (another great story), he soon became a regular in another series.
Nick competing is what really hooked his dad, as Paul started casting around for things to do in the hours when his son was not on track.
His introduction to flagging came from that very first conversation and golf cart ride around with Charlie Leonard, who said, “Maybe you guys can work the corners?”
“Both Nick and I were like, ‘Seriously? We can get that close to race cars? This is pretty cool! Let’s go for it!’”
The pair signed up, got some quick but solid instruction, and were put right to work.
“The first corner we worked was the Bus Stop at Daytona,” Soriano says. “We were pinching ourselves, going, ‘How many people on earth have actually been here, been this close to race cars?’
“The next race we worked, we were put out at Turn 6 at Daytona – the closest on the racetrack you can be to a race car. You are literally making eye contact with the drivers. We were out there with some old cronies – these boys have been there for years having a good old time. It was nice for them to take us under their wing, really. And it was exhilarating.
“They really hooked us.”
Road to the Pros
Soriano started taking his whites to every event and raising his hand: “If the stewards need something or our car breaks, I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ll hang around and work a corner.’ I really enjoy jumping in like that – even today.”
Very soon, he had earned a local reputation. (“Hey, I’m a volunteer. I’ll do whatever they need me to do.”) Saying yes and always following through was his path to his first pro race invite.
For others? “Well, you of course have to be an SCCA member, you have to go through the registration process, and you’ve got to know who your specialty chief is – they’ve got to approve you.
“The first Rolex I worked I was like, ‘Wow, this is serious stuff.’ I mean, I’m a race official. We have to take this stuff seriously, and I always emphasize that to anybody I work with, especially the newbies that come in here. We are race officials.”
For better or worse, Soriano implies, officials actions can determine the outcome of a race.
“It really comes through experience at [road] races. You’ve got to work races. No specialty chief will allow you to step right in to working an event like the Rolex in the beginning.”
The training and pre-qualifying process is why SCCA workers are in such high demand.
Soriano has declined all invitations to join his Region board, but he could not turn down a request to help coordinate SCCA workers involved at both IMSA’s Roar Before the Rolex 24 and Rolex 24 at Daytona events three years ago.
“’You’ve worked the race, you know what’s going on,’ they told me. So I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll coordinate the meetings and work with our support team leader, Michael McKee. Others are flag chief, food support, and registration – those are the main areas. I coordinate camping, work with the corner marshals.
And it’s personally rewarding to the former Navy man who says it’s all about gaining and sharing experience.
Experiencing Race Control
One oft-overlooked recruiting tool that goes beyond the lure of getting close to the action working a corner? Soriano explains:
“Here in Central Florida Region, we have Daytona, UCF, and Embry-Riddle – all those aeronautical engineers that are pretty highly motivated. They hear there’s a Club race going on, so they come over and we introduce them at a Club race, take them out to the corner. We’d had good luck with that, getting them to come back.
“But a real eye-opening experience for me was being taken up to Race Control. Wow! Here at Daytona, you’ve got a complete view of this track, with TV cameras and reports from corner stations. When you see that, realize the bevy of activity with radio people; you’ve got the weather behind you and you’ve got EMS – there’s so much going on.
With the last group we took up, we got permission to take them up to the spotter’s stand on top of the roof at Daytona. This is a thrilling experience and that’s how you get ’em involved.
“So then they come back to the corners,” Soriano adds, “and they’re working and they get it. We teach ’em flagging, to pay attention to what’s going on. And we refer them to the online training, so they get it a little bit more.
“Eventually, these people go, ‘Hey, if you need help at, say, the Rolex or Sebring 12 Hour, what can we do?’ Well, you’re probably not going out to a corner straight away, but we’ll give you a headset and you can listen to the radio until somebody needs something you can help with – a food pick up maybe – and now you’re part of the event.”
“These college kids, they’re the future of the Club. We need to make their experience as pleasurable as possible so that they do come back. And I think we do that. [This year’s group] had a blast during the Rolex. They were fairly new SCCA members and they couldn’t believe they were there, able to roam the infield. They were starstruck by all the drivers, starting to learn the sport a little bit. Soon they’ll be following IMSA, looking for more opportunities, sharpening their skills at the Region level. That’s the way it starts.”
In Deep
Enthusiasm can take you a long way in SCCA, but few are in as deep as Paul Soriano.
“I went to an SCCA Drivers’ School back in 2017, used my son’s Miata. It was alright. I want to know more about the sport, but really don’t want to compete – I don’t have to prove anything to anybody, but I thought it would be cool to put a car on the track.
“And it was – a very enlightening experience because I got to see it from a driver’s perspective. I learned that when you can bring that to working a corner, it can make a huge difference.
“It made a big difference for me, doing a [recent] SCCA Track Night in America at Daytona. I’ve worked those corners so I was looking to see what was going on, and I notice that at Turn 5 there was only one guy there. I’m thinking, man, this guy’s gotta be running. So I did a couple of laps in the beginning and then I figured, you know what, I don’t wanna go out anymore. The car’s great. I had a good time. So I called Race Control and said, ‘Hey, I noticed you only got one guy on Turn 5. Want me to work the rest of the day? I’ll go help him out.
“So I put the car in the trailer, went out to 5 and gave the guy a little bit of assistance.”
Soriano’s experienced presence has been a relief to many, and he never stops: Having worked the IMSA Roar and Rolex, next he served in the hospitality building at the Daytona 500, then headed to the St. Petersburg IndyCar season opener, and later this month, he’ll be at the IMSA Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
This is much more than he bargained for, he says, driving through the tunnel at Daytona a dozen years ago to indulge his son’s interest in sports car racing. Family fun, lifelong friendships, great memories, a wealth of stories – what the letters “S-C-C-A” now mean to him.
Want to work IMSA races like Paul does? Contact your local SCCA Region and start volunteering today. From there, you’ll get access to SCCA’s Learning Management System (LMS) tutorials and begin your journey. Find out more at scca.com/trackside.
Photo by Dave Green
