Quarter midget racing offers near fanatical support structures for its racers. Mark Martin played a huge role in getting a quarter midget track built and operating at New Smyrna Speedway in Florida, near his home. His son Matt was the first quarter midget racer with a national sponsorship a few years back. Bobby Labonte will open a showplace track in Salisbury, North Carolina this year.
"We as an organization have taken a big step toward creating a legitimate ladder system in open-wheel racing," Bunn said. "It goes from quarter midgets to Focus midgets to midgets to sprint cars and Silver Crown cars. That's not just important to USAC-it's important to all of open-wheel racing. There is someplace now where you can draw a line from the smallest cockpit to the largest cockpit in open-wheel racing. It's a pretty big deal."
It's an even bigger deal now, as open-wheel racing has become the fertile shopping ground of stock car team owners and driver-development programs.
"A quarter midget is a pretty safe jump right to a Legends car," Bunn said. "It makes as much sense as anything. If you look at the big picture of racing in general, quarter midget racing is good for our sport, and it is good for racing."
Many of the regions offer training cars for the purpose of luring new members. Interested parents can put their child in a training car to see if they like it before plunking down hard cash for a car. Once the decision is made to move forward, the training car can be used for seat time and experience.
Like Bandoleros, quarter midgets require a transporter-it can be a station wagon, mini-van, or trailer. Tools, spares, and tires make up the rest of the required equipment. Several parents have made a racing budget work with around $2,000 in disposable income, and all have said it was well worth the initial cost.
Quarter midgets teach the same things all Kid Racer classes do: patience, discipline, and how to race. Since quarter midget racers all race on ovals, there is a natural progression to other oval-based series. Without the feeder system inherent in INEX, quarter midget racers are more apt to move up earlier. Indiana natives Newman, Gordon, and Stewart all went the open-wheel route with the United States Auto Club, while the Labontes made the jump to stock cars in their native Texas.
Go-karts are the way to the top in open-wheel racing in other countries, and they have a huge following as well. Run on both dirt and pavement, on both ovals and road courses, go-karts are a solid Kid Racing starting ground as well. There is no age limit per se, as karting offers drivers from 5 to 75 a place to race.
Kart racing is overseen by two major organizations: the World Karting Association and the International Karting Federation. WKA runs things east of the Mississippi and the IKF does the same out west. Similar rules allow many of the nearly 100,000 karters to compete against each other and with both organizations.
Many classes are available, depending on engine size and configuration. Sprint and Champ karts mostly run on small dirt ovals, although variations run on all sorts of courses. The king of karts is the Enduro, which is capable of speeds in excess of 100 mph at a place like Daytona.
In beginner classes, minimum weights range from 250-435 pounds and horsepower is between 10 and 18 in these. As the classes become more powerful, weight limits and body restrictions become more common.
Kid Racing is more than just the latest fad, the way soccer was a few years back. It is the new hope for motorsports. As more kids get involved in the sport, many with dreams of NASCAR stardom in their mind's eye, the more fuel the sport will have through the years.
When motorsports first began to boom following World War II, there were no programs like this. Yet the sport survived and flourished. Kid Racing is the key to replenishing the lifeblood of the sport, and it can be found nearly anywhere you look: on ovals, road courses, and dragstrips all across the country.
Whether your child is into Bandoleros, Legends Cars, quarter midgets, go-karts, or the throwback Thunder Roadsters, there's a series out there that will meet your needs. Racing has always been a family sport, and the family that races together forges a bond that is not easily broken.
Today's Speed Racers are on the prowl, and instead of a fictional Mark 5, they have real race cars to work with. Sit back and watch them go, and don't forget your lawn chair!
It's All About The EyesKid Racing in general is about teaching kids to race, to learn that life does not take place inside a vacuum, and to have fun. H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler, founder of 600 Racing and the INEX constellation of Bandoleros, Legends Cars, and Thunder Roadsters, said that children often make better racers than adults for one simple reason: It's the eyes.
"Back in the late '70s and early '80s, we did a lot of research trying to find out what physical qualities made a race driver," Wheeler said. "We tested Cup drivers, Busch drivers, good drivers, bad drivers all the way down the line. We never really found anything that was the difference between Earnhardt and some guy that didn't make it. We suspect that it had something to do with eyes. The great drivers and athletes like Ted Williams may be able to see things that the rest of us can't."
To further flesh out this theory, the naturally curious Wheeler went to experts. "There's no test for that [determining what one person can see in total], and I've talked to flight surgeons for NASA and everything else who have done combat pilot testing." Wheeler said. "They sort of agree with that. The whole thing came to me while reading one of Patrick O'Brien's books on the British navy. That fascinates me because they had the greatest management system in the history of the world. The captain of a British ship is off the coast of France in 1810, and this is during a time when whoever spotted the other ship first usually won or got out of the way or whatever. The captain said, 'where's the cabin boy?' He gets the cabin boy and sends him up the mainmast to the top because he has the best eyes on the ship."
Again, Wheeler went to experts."I asked a couple of optometrists how they felt about these kids versus adults. They said, 'all you have to do is be in my office for one day and you'll see.' They look through that equipment they have into your eyes, and they see it every day. The difference in the interior of the eye in a 12-year-old and a 30-year-old is pretty significant. You can see plaque building up in there in the 30-year-old, and it's as clear as a bell in the kids. I see these kids doing things on the track that I can't believe. You'd think that if you have a class for kids between 8 and 11 like we do, it would be total mayhem, but we've even run them in the rain, and they have as few or as many wrecks as the rest of them."
The one thing that such crystal-clear vision fosters, Wheeler cautions, is a sense of invincibility. "They have absolutely no fear, and that's the thing you have to watch. They start to learn fear at about the age of 14."
Starting the kids early in racing, whether it's in Bandoleros, go-karts, or quarter midgets, is a good thing, Wheeler said. However, sometimes there are speed bumps for Kid Racers. "In dealing with kid stuff ... my dad was a coach, so I know all about that," Wheeler said. "You end up dealing with parents, mostly. That's been an interesting challenge. Sometimes, we have wanted to throw all the parents out of the pits and say, 'let's go racing.'"-Ron Lemasters Jr.