John Pellicano current driver and team owner

Racing started from a very young age for GioVa Racing Team owner, John Pellicano. As a youngster growing up in the Sydney suburb of Ashbury in the mid 60's, John had a natural affiliation with speed. The desire to go fast manifested itself in many forms starting out with home made billy-carts which were raced around racetracks defined with chalk.

As the years progressed, John moved away from gravity powered vehicles to those powered with two-stroke engines and by his early teens was racing motor-cross bikes and doing very well at it - though if it had two wheels there was always a tendency to keep it on one.

It was sometime in the late 70's that John first became aware of superkarts. As a teenager walking along Canterbury road, John would often walk past the 'St George Kart Center'. The sight of these machines built purely for speed was enough to get John hooked and it wasn't long before he was competing in a Suzuki powered, 250cc air-cooled kart around tracks such as the legendary Amaroo Park.

However the superkarting story had to take a hiatus after only a year of racing while John followed work pursuits. A family friend snatched John fresh from completing his HSC and into his jewellery business. This was a natural career path for John owing to his tendency towards mechanics, his father was a tool maker afterall, and his creative flair which no doubt owes a lot to his Italian heritage. This combination of skills would see John (or Pelly as he is known to friends), produce many notable pieces including an array of competition items which would net several 'Diploma of Honor for Design and Manufacture' along the way. Further to this, John was commissioned to produce the 'Penthouse Pet of the Year Key' from 1994 through to the present day.

After establishing his own jewellery business, GioVa Jewellery, in the early 80’s (now amalgamated into www.robertalan.com.au), John would return to superkarting in 1990, ten years since first catching 'the bug'. This return to motorsport kickstarted a devotion to Australian Superkarting which has now spanned nearly two decades, seeing John race competitively across the country in far-away locations such as Wannaroo Raceway in Perth, Baskerville and Symonds Plains raceways in Tasmania and notably in the Adelaide Formula One support events from the early to late '90s. Throughout this period John has also taken his fair share of trophies, most notably of which was the hotly contested 1994 250cc National Championship which John won driving his iconic number 62 plated, black and green GioVa Racing machine.

In addition to taking a large amount from the sport including a workshop full of trophies and countless racing stories, Pelly is also one to give back to the sport. As a testament to this, John served as NSW Club President for the years 2003-2005 and is regularly seen wandering the pits at race meetings assisting others with engine/setup issues. He is also known to bend the odd bit of steel back at his workshop in return for little more than thanks.

In spite of manys years on the track, or perhaps because of, Pelly has just as much desire to win today as he had when it all began back in 1979...

1993 NSW '250 National' Champion
1994 NSW '250 National' Champion
1994 Australian '250 National' Champion
1995 NSW '250 National' Champion

1998 NSW '250 International' Champion
1999 NSW '250 International' Champion