Reino Kalervo Tulonen, 89, of Fitchburg, died Jan. 26 at HealthAlliance Leominster Hospital after an illness.
Reino was born and raised in Lunenburg. When he was young he worked for the Crocker-Burbank Company, and then moved to Custom Auto Body where he worked until starting his own business as a front end alignment specialist until he retired. But his real love was racing cars.
"The Flying Finn", as he came to be known, began his racing career in 1946, the year his first child was born, and continued for thirty years. He raced many types of cars including; big cars, midgets, stock cars and late models. His most successful car was a cut down that he designed and built himself. Most of his car racing was done in New England, but he also drove in Canada, Darlington, NC, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Over the years, Reino won many races with trophies reflecting his skill as a race car driver and articles describing his daring exploits on the track. He was awarded the 1964 Champion Class A Driver by the Atlantic Auto Racing Association, and had fans from around the world requesting his autograph and wanting to talk to him about his racing career. In 2005, he was inducted into the New England Antique Racers Hall of Fame in recognition of a life time of racing.
Reino also competed in four Sprint Cup Series events in his career, earning one top-ten. All of those races came in 1951, when Tulonen debuted at Morristown, finishing 27th. Most of the year would also be a struggle for Tulonen, finishing 40th at Darlington and 34th at Langhorne. But Tulonen redeemed himself in his final career race. Starting 6th in the race at Thompson, Tulonen drove to a career-best 5th place effort.
