Thirty Years of Playing With Cars
The father-and-son story behind Velocity Pro Sims — from a Hanukkah night in Puerto Rico to our shop in Daytona Beach.
The Hanukkah Kart
For weeks, my dad kept pulling me into the shop to help him set up a go-kart — one he said he was selling to a young kid. I was five. I didn't think much of it.
Then came Hanukkah. That night I unwrapped a helmet. Then a race suit. Then boots and gloves. I remember the confusion more than anything: why was I getting all of this... with no go-kart? So I finally asked where it was. The answer was out in the garage, sitting in the bed of my dad's pickup truck — my very first Tony Kart Baby Kart.
The young kid was me.
After that we ran almost every weekend, my dad and I, until our move to Miami cut it short.
The Itch
Karting didn't really exist in Miami when we arrived, so we moved on from it. It never stopped feeling like a big part of me, though.
Any time anything motorsport came near Miami, we went — Ferrari race weekends, sports cars at Sebring, and years later, Formula 1 in our own backyard — because it scratched that itch.
Wheels Without Engines
Eventually I found video games. A controller at first, then a MadCatz wheel and pedals clamped to a desk. Years of Need for Speed turned into years of the F1 games — until I got older, work took over, and the time for games disappeared.
Food, Photos, First Hardware
I'd finished a culinary degree a few years earlier, and I'd always been behind a camera. In 2017 I put the two together and started a photography company in Miami shooting for restaurants.
My love of food and my love of photography were finally paying the bills — and for the first time, there was money left over for something else: my first pieces of sim hardware.
Three Friends
The sim story really belongs to three friends.
Gabriel introduced me to iRacing almost twenty years ago now. I still remember driving Niki Lauda's Ferrari at the Nürburgring in VR and immediately texting my dad:
Anthony bought an Xbox and a wheel for Forza, barely touched them, and let me take the whole setup home. I raced alone, every single day.
And Andrew — Andrew got bored racing Gran Turismo by himself, so he bought me a PlayStation and shipped it down to Miami. We raced online together for over a year, and that's when the DIY desk setup finally became a proper rig. Or what I thought was a proper rig back then.
Pretty Parts & a Stubborn PC
As time went on I did what most sim racers do: I upgraded, mostly based on what looked pretty. It's a mistake a lot of people make, and it ends up costing way more money than it needs to. I know, because I made it.
Around then I built a PC for my photography work, couldn't stand working on Windows, and tried to sell it. No takers. It sat in a corner until one day I installed Assetto Corsa on it. The moment I realized I could download nearly any car and any track on earth and just drive, I was hooked. Shortly after that I downloaded iRacing — and I've never gone back.
Content, COVID, All In
Just before COVID I started producing sim racing content, back when sim racing content was still new and fresh. Then the world shut down, sim racing exploded, and my videos found their way in front of several key people in the industry. Those turned into the most important connections of my life.
I went to work in the industry and did a bit of everything — content, then manufacturing, sales, and marketing.
Our Own Shop
At the end of 2023, my dad and I decided it was time to set up our own shop and share the passion we have for this sport with the rest of the world. This is where “I” becomes “we” — Velocity Pro Sims has been a father-and-son operation from day one.
There were people in this industry running successful sim businesses that were simply lacking in passion and service, and we knew we could do better. We were told we could never compete.
We did. And we're thriving.
We started in Miami alongside our partnership with NASCAR, and after a year of operations we moved up to Daytona Beach to be closer to NASCAR and run more events across the country. Our first event after the move was the Daytona 500.
Three years in, we've delivered hundreds of real-world activations, simulator sales have exploded, and we're on our third shop here in Daytona Beach.
From the Sim to Sebring
After all of it — the kart, the games, the rigs, the business — I finally got the chance to get into a real race car. I earned my SCCA Novice Permit at Sebring in an MX-5, and the similarities between the car and the sim were incredible. The feedback through the wheel was identical to my Simucube, the driving itself felt the same, and even my vision on track worked the way the sim trained it to. The car drove exactly as I expected it to.
It was the greatest experience of my life, and something I hope to do again and again.
Still Playing With Cars
Three decades later, we're still playing with cars — with no intention of ever stopping.
The mission hasn't changed since day one: serve this industry and this community. We built Velocity Pro Sims on the belief that support is the biggest thing missing in sim racing, and we work every day to fix that. Our knowledge covers nearly every piece of sim racing hardware out there — so no matter your setup, we're with you far beyond getting it running. Every step of the journey.