Like any self-respecting 5-year-old, Christian Elder has started whittling down his career options. He might want to be a professional baseball player, which is why this spring he played T-ball once or twice a week near his Charles County home. He also might want to be a professional NASCAR driver, which is why after the Saturday morning T-ball games Christian and his father, Richie Elder, headed to a paved oval in King George County, Va., where Christian climbed into his $2,000 go-kart and piloted it around the 1/5 -mile track at speeds in excess of 30 mph.
"Like NASCAR, kind of," the 3-foot-6, 43-pound Christian said while sipping a can of soda after a recent race, "but not really as fast."
As NASCAR has driven motorsports toward the front of the sports lineup over the past decade, with 75 million fans and television ratings topped only by the NFL, the stock-car series and its open-wheel cousins are spawning younger fans like Christian Elder who unleash their exhaust-filled dreams every weekend in organized and competitive go-kart races.
While exponentially more grade schoolers still play organized soccer or baseball than race go-karts, the sport appears to be booming. The World Karting Association, go-karting's largest sanctioning body, estimates there are between 125,000 and 150,000 karters of all ages in the United States, up from 100,000 in 1994.
Demographic information is spotty in a decentralized sport in which anyone can show up with a go-kart at a track, but industry veterans estimate that 25-35 percent of participants are aged 21 or under, for a total of between 31,000 and 52,000 young karters. By comparison, the United States Youth Soccer Association has seen its participation numbers hover at just more than 3 million over the past four years, while Little League, which has seen its numbers decline about one percent annually since 1997, has 2.1 million American participants.
World Karting Association officials, who now set up a promotional booth at nearly every NASCAR event, attribute the growth largely to stock-car racing's increasing popularity, and track operators agree.
"If you talk to every one of these kids, the one thing they want to do is be a NASCAR driver," said Patty Pool, owner of King George Speedway, which is about halfway between Washington and Richmond. "Every one of them, that's their dream."
Statewide go-kart races in Florida that drew 30 or 40 entries two decades ago now have 400 or 500 racers "because of the hype that's going on; the daddies, the parents watching racing every weekend on the boob tube," Florida Karting Association President Jimmy Sims said. Capital City Speedway, a Richmond area dirt track, has experienced similar growth; races that attracted 35 drivers in the late 1980s now have 170 or 175 "because of NASCAR, people wanting to race," track owner Ronnie Sipe said.
As racing interest cascades into younger demographics, major professional operations have gotten involved. The Indy Racing League, a North American open-wheel circuit best known for the Indianapolis 500, this year began sponsoring the Stars of Karting series for an elite group of several hundred racers; that series experienced a 36 percent growth from the first to second quarters of the year.
For the third year, energy drink manufacturer Red Bull is sponsoring a succession of national tryouts for 13- to 17 -year-old go-karters with ambitions to ride in Formula One, the international open-wheel circuit that is the world's most popular and glamorous series. More than 3,000 drivers auditioned this year -- a 50 percent increase over last year -- for no more than three spots; the winners are sent to Europe to compete in a junior formula series.
Web sites offer scouting reports on up-and-coming drivers, and NASCAR heavyweight Roush Racing just began filming a reality show for the Discovery Channel that will select the team's next truck series driver. With 25 slots available, organizers heard from 1,700 applicants, some of whom had been racing since they were 5.
"The competitiveness of the sport and the growth in popularity has meant that there's more interest in it, and to be competitive you have to start at an early age," said Torrey Galida, Roush's senior vice president of marketing. "Just like Olympic athletes, they all start very young and they dedicate their entire lives to it."
