One morning in late January, Mr. Bonforte, a handful of professional racecar drivers and about a dozen members of a pit crew were crowded into a tiny tent just off the pit lane of the Daytona International Speedway. It was the day before the starting flag for the Rolex 24, an endurance race that begins the International Motor Sports Association’s racing season. Sports-car racing — as opposed to the Indianapolis 500 or Nascar racing — is generally the domain of upper-crust European carmakers like Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Maserati and Aston Martin.

Mr. Bonforte was on hand to cheer on the Racer’s Group-Aston Martin Racing, a franchise in which he and several other tech luminaries have made investments. T.R.G.-A.M.R. is run by Kevin Buckler, a fast-talking former professional driver who that morning sat in a set of bleachers in the pit. Mr. Buckler’s team fields drivers in more than a dozen races a year, and he calls strategy in each of them. But racing is only half of his business. He also owns a winery in Petaluma, north of San Francisco, and he has sought out connections with the tech industry in order to turn racing into the new great nexus for business networking, or what Mr. Buckler calls “relationship marketing.”

“These Silicon Valley companies tell me that they’ve got skyboxes at the Raiders, the Giants, the 49ers for their clients, but they can’t fill them,” Mr. Buckler explained when he wasn’t barking calls over a headset to his drivers. “We let you invite your customers to Laguna Seca Raceway for a morning, where they’ll get professional instruction driving Aston Martin racecars, and then we wrap up with a nice dinner or wine tasting,” he said. “Well, they’re full, everyone wants to go.”

Mr. Buckler says he holds several such driving events every year for tech companies hoping to attract customers and employees, banks and venture capital firms looking for wealthy clients, and entrepreneurs hoping to make new contacts. He also hosts many more events at which people don’t drive fast cars but instead sit on the sidelines and watch professionals do it. A few of Mr. Buckler’s corporate sponsors told me that networking through racing had resulted in many deals.

Kyle Smith, a wealth management adviser at the firm Masters Private Client Group, once set up an event with Mr. Buckler at Sebring International Raceway, in central Florida. She was hoping to impress several current and potential clients, and she says it worked. “Our guests were made to feel part of the team,” Ms. Smith told me in an email, describing how they all donned racing fire suits and stood in the pits while Mr. Buckler held a strategy session with his team. After the event, one of the firm’s clients signed over about $30 million for Masters PCG to manage. Another event yielded a $10 million client, Ms. Smith said.

The networking opportunities were on full display at Daytona. Alongside a row of mechanic’s bays in which rocket-shaped racecars sat in various sad states of disassembly, Mr. Buckler’s people had set up a few cocktail tables and a wine-and-cheese spread. Representatives from the team’s sponsors — among them an industrial lighting company and a firm that makes online software — were mingling with their guests and customers.