Story and photos from motoamerica.com

Hands down, Alessandro Di Mario has the coolest name in the MotoAmerica paddock. Say it to yourself slowly and let it roll off your tongue… Alessandro Di Mario.  The kid could be a gondolier, piloting narrow boats up and down the canals of Venice. Fortunately, however, MotoAmerica has him and Italy does not.

At just 15 (he turns 16 on December 9), Di Mario is already a class champion in MotoAmerica and it’s not in the Junior Cup class. Di Mario is the 2024 MotoAmerica Twins Cup Champion, taking the title in his rookie season in the class and just his second season in the MotoAmerica Championship. The title, however, didn’t come easy for the soft-spoken and modest Di Mario as he had to steal the title from his friend Rocco Landers in the final two races of the season at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

So how did this kid get from Italy to Lexington, Kentucky, and from a 10-year-old racing for the first time to a MotoAmerica Champion in just his second season.

Let’s start with the how. Di Mario’s father, Luigi (easily the second-best name in the paddock) got the opportunity with his work to move to America and he jumped at it. Young Alessandro was just 10 when the family picked up and crossed the Atlantic to make their new home in Lexington, Kentucky.

It was there that Di Mario was able to get back to riding and racing motorcycles, something he’d started doing at the tender age of four on a pocketbike in Italy’s CIV series. As a 10-year-old, Di Mario started his U.S. racing career with his debut coming in 2019. Yes, 2019.

Di Mario tasted success almost immediately. In 2022, he won the coveted Nicky Hayden AMA Road Race Horizon Award as well as earning the North America Talent Cup Championship, the now defunct series that used spec Aprilia RS250 SP2s.

When he was old enough, in 2023, Di Mario made the jump to MotoAmerica and its Junior Cup class, where he finished eighth in his rookie season with two podiums and a best finish of second at Pittsburgh International Race Complex. Although his season wasn’t sensational, it was hard not to notice Di Mario – and not just because of his name. He was polite, well-spoken, down to earth… and fast.

Armed with a Rodio Racing – Powered by Robem Engineering Aprilia RS 660, Di Mario’s 2024 campaign started with a fourth and a third at Daytona. At Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, Di Mario was third behind Rocco Landers and Rodio Racing teammate Gus Rodio in the dry, but he struggled in the rain of race two, tiptoeing to ninth. It was his worst result of the season.

In race one at Barber Motorsports Park, it rained again. This time Di Mario looked to have the best of the miserable conditions. Right up until the point when he didn’t. Di Mario crashed out of the lead, remounted and finished seventh. The next day he won the first MotoAmerica race of his career. And from there… well, it was nothing but success with four second-place finishes in a row. Unfortunately for Di Mario, Landers won three of those four races, and he led the class rookie in the title chase going into the final round.

The margin? 19 points.

It would have taken a brave soul to bet on Di Mario with a 19-point deficit to Landers. As it turns out, the brave soul would have been a rich brave soul. Di Mario was fast all weekend and he won both races. Landers, who didn’t have to do much to take the title even with Di Mario winning both, surprisingly didn’t do enough. In fact, he sort of snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. As crazy as it sounds, Landers didn’t score a single point in the final two races of the season as he crashed out of both.

Although the points margin was large going into the Texas Showdown, Di Mario took a little from Jim Carrey’s character in the movie “Dumb And Dumber” “So you’re telling me there’s a chance…”

“Honestly, yes, I thought I had a chance,” Di Mario, a high school Junior, said. “I made one mistake (in the title chase) and that’s why I was behind him, so I was like, ‘he hasn’t made a mistake yet.’ I thought he might make a mistake in the last round so I was pretty confident. I just knew I had to win both races and I knew it was going to be hard, but I couldn’t control any of that. I was just going out there to go as fast as possible and try to win both races. What he did was up to him.”

The best weekend of his life?

“It’s probably up there as one of my best weekends,” Di Mario said. “It’s up there with Barber because I love Barber, and I got my first win there.”

If you’re not sure how young 15 is, think of it this way: 19-year-old Rocco Landers is actually a hero to Di Mario.

“I met Rocco when I was racing WERA and I would go to watch MotoAmerica and I was like, ‘I’m going to be like those kids one day.’ I was watching Rocco, and I was like, ‘this guy is faaassst.’ When I met him, I was like, ‘whoa… Rocco Landers.’ It was like Valentino Rossi.’ ”

And Landers is also a Di Mario fan.

“Even at Barber when I was trying to win and I think he didn’t know if he had the pace, he told me that if he didn’t win it, he would be happy that I did,” Di Mario said. “At the time I was like third or fourth in the championship, so I didn’t matter that much.”

For a 15-year-old, Di Mario has a good grasp of the history of the sport he is now a champion of. At the final Twins Cup round at COTA, Di Mario was spotted with his parents stargazing at 1993 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz. Di Mario was waved over and had his photo taken with the Texan. And he was in heaven.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been watching the races,” Di Mario said. “Since I was like four. I’ve watched everything and since then, on YouTube, I’ve really just watched everything… any type of racing I would watch for hours. Just watching races. People like that… I mean it’s Kevin Schwantz so it’s like an idol.”

Di Mario obviously has a bright future ahead of him and if he has his druthers, he will make the move to the Supersport class in 2025.

“I’d like to go to Supersport next year because the level is really high,” Di Mario said. “If you can battle with those guys… well, the faster the guys you race with, the faster you get.”