The tracks that are stepping up and starting to get involved with Bandolero racing are appreciating the opportunity to have families come to their tracks, and they know they are investing in the future of their track because those Bandolero drivers quite often move up into Legends cars and then into the local Street Stock or Late Model division," Krentz said. "They know they're planting the seed for the future."
The Bandolero class came about as a result of pressure from parents for a class suited to Kid Racers. "We didn't know where the Legends were going to go," Wheeler said. "We just knew that there was a big gap there for Walter Mitty drivers and also teenagers because of Jeff Gordon's introduction to Pop Warner Racing, which is what I call it. Once we got the Legends going on, and we had teenagers driving in it as well as 60-year-olds-and we broke that up into age groups, because believe me, a 60-year-old does not like getting beat by a 13-year-old-we saw that there was more pressure on us for 12-, 11-, 10- all the way down to 8-year-olds to drive a Legends car. We thought the Legends car, as small as it is, was too big for that age group to drive. So we began to look at karts.
"The whole idea with the Bandolero was, it was a kart with a full-size rollcage," Wheeler said. "It got out of hand. We had to put shocks on it, traditional racing tires, but we wanted to make it safe. That was the big thing. The Bandolero came about, and we thought that it would also appeal to some adults. One of the things we didn't want to do was cram the driver in, so we designed the cockpit first and built the car around it. It took off, and I was just amazed at the number of kids 8 and 9 years old whose parents wanted to put them in a race car. We have had some challenges. The one thing that everybody has to deal with in small cars like these is, you don't want to hurt them (the kids)."
In terms of safety, Wheeler said there has been one injury of note: a broken leg. "We've been at it five years, 500 cars, and more than 2,000 races," Wheeler said. "A kid [named Cameron] broke his leg. We decided to put a bar in [the car] to stiffen it up, and we called it the Cameron bar, like the Petty bar in stock car rollcages. He loved that. We haven't had an injury since then, even though we have had violent flips, T-bones, and things like that. That's the first and foremost thing you have to think of with kids. That's front-page on the New York Times."
The progression from Bandoleros to Legends Cars is about 70 percent, according to Krentz. "It's an incredible migration," he said. "It's really enjoyable. I've seen Bandolero drivers to whom I sold cars in 1999 and 2000 [go to] the Pro Division of Legends and are ready to move up to Late Models and other classes. Probably 30-40 percent of Legends drivers move on into something else. Some of them, however, buy a Legends car and race it for 10 years. That's the level they want to be at, and they are comfortable with it. They enjoy the INEX exposure and being part of the INEX experience."
With more than 200 tracks around the world offering at least one INEX class, that's a pretty stout number. Since 1992, 600 Racing has produced about 5,000 Legends Cars, 700 Bandoleros, and about 200 Thunder Roadsters. The cars compete in approximately 2,000 races every year across the country.
Getting the entire family involved is part of the program, as evidenced by the Harrells and by Benny Mingo, who goes racing with his father, Benny Sr.
One thing you notice when attending a Bandolero event in the Carolinas is the number of racing names in the lineups. At one Winter Series event at Lowe's Motor Speedway, the following names appeared on the day's competition roster: Kyle Grissom (son of Steve); Tyler Green (nephew of David); Brandon McReynolds (son of Larry); Ryan Blaney (son of Dave), and Chrissy Wallace (daughter of Mike). What you don't see are the names of the NASCAR crewmen and mechanics who race, although there are plenty. It is not uncommon to see their famous fathers out there slinging wrenches and hatching strategy. Larry McReynolds, with a stopwatch in one hand and a father's concentration etched on his face, watches his son race.
Rich HistoryQuarter midgets and karts, as mentioned above, make up the other primary entry points for kid racers. Many of today's best drivers were karters, such as Ricky Rudd, and even more were quarter midget stars. Names like Bobby and Terry Labonte, Ryan Newman, Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart pop to mind. Newman is a two-time national quarter midget champion.
Like Bandoleros, quarter midgets are scaled down versions of the real thing. The age groups are similar, as quarter midgets are for drivers age 5 to 16. Like Bandoleros, quarter midgets have four-wheel independent suspensions and full rollcages. Engines are from 120 cc to 150 cc, and the cars race on 11/420-mile banked oval tracks of dirt, concrete, or asphalt.
The participation level in quarter midgets is on par with Bandoleros-Legends-Thunder Roadsters, as about 6,500 drivers and 3,200 families participate in the Quarter Midgets of America programs. QMA is divided into 13 geographic regions, the largest being Region 2 (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Maryland) and Region 4 (Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky).
"What they do is start the drivers off in a training period, where they learn where the brake and accelerator pedals are and that these are real racing cars, not a Nintendo game," said Eric Bunn of the United States Auto Club, which performs many business-oriented tasks for the QMA. "When you hit something in a car, it can hurt. They learn flags, procedures, and they run novice-only races under the watchful eye of their trainers.
Bunn said there is a class of quarter midget for every age group and every budget, from not much to whatever you want to spend. Many families start out with a used car, although you can spend roughly from $2,000 to more than $10,000 depending on the class.
"Quarter midgets have their own internal ladder system, with all the classes you have and the age groups," Bunn said. "Quarter midgets average 45-50 mph maximum speed, depending on the class. The medium-range Hondas can flat-foot it around some of the tracks, and there's a wide variety of tracks (62 scattered through the regions) on which to compete.
The maximum height is 50 inches at the top of the cage; the maximum length from the pushbar to the front bumper is 84 inches, and the minimum weight is 350 pounds without driver. Maximum width from the center of the tires is 34 inches.
The sport began in the '30s in Los Angeles, California. Following World War II, the sport took off the same way the full-sized midgets did. A new car can cost as much as $3,000 for the upper classes, while a good used machine can be had for as little as $700. Stock engines range from below $500 to well over $3,000 for an engine tuned to compete at the highest levels. Gear sets are also extra. A new Honda engine was recently introduced for use in novice and stock classes, and that should keep costs down somewhat in the future. Bunn said the Honda GX120 is $400, and they live forever with no modification. "It's a one-lunger, and it's a real reliable little piece," Bunn said. "Our most popular classes are the Honda classes.