April 6, 2026

Hope everyone had a very nice Easter like we did thanks to my gourmet chef wife. I ate too much but it was the first day in about a week I felt close to normal thanks to chemotherapy making me sick again.

So my blog this week is on friend and racer Max Papis. He continues to be in Indy Car as the chief steward along with Arie Luyendyk.  Arie is another friend and an old neighbor of ours. 

I can't believe that I've never done a blog on "Mad Max" or even have photos of his racing career in my website. So here we go!

Max earned the nickname "Mad Max" after the drive he did towards the end of the 1996 24 hours of Daytona. He was a lap down in his Ferrari 333SP but got the lap back and almost won the race chasing Wayne Taylor. He even did a pit stop at racing speed and that changed the following year when you could no longer drive in on racing speed. Mad Max finished 64 seconds behind to finish second.

A true racer in just about all types of racing as he has been in Formula One, Indy Car, CART, Champ Car, IMSA, NASCAR and even Stadium Trucks. He started winning in go karts as a very young driver in his native Italy and in the CART Indy Car Series he won 3 races.

I've gotten to know Max and his family through the years. Married to Tatiana Fittipaldi they have two children that are racing now of course. Matteo and Marco have a great coaches with Max. Max even helps out his cousins Pietro and Enzo Fittipaldi in their racing careers.

If that isn't enough Max and Tatiana started Max Papis Innovations in 2009. They supply racing steering wheels and many more new racing products every day. Checkout www.maxpapisinc.com to see all their products.

I've photographed Max for years in Indy Car at Road America and  at the Milwaukee Mile.

Attached here are photos of Max at Road America finishing 4th in 2003 and the Milwaukee Mile where he finished seventh. I'll continue digging in the archives and add more photos of Max in the future.

Enjoy some photos from 2000 and 2003 and have a great week.

Thanks,

Rich