Children, Start Your Engines

Indeed, many national stars began some sort of racing before they were 10, whether in go-karts, quarter-midgets or on motorcycles. Jeff Gordon was winning go-kart and quarter-midget championships in elementary school; Tony Stewart, another former NASCAR champion, won an International Karting Foundation national title when he was 12; Jamie McMurray started karting at age 8 and won four U.S. titles; and Kevin Harvick began at age 5 and won seven national championships. Virtually every top European driver began in go-karts, as did most American open-wheel stars, such as Michael Andretti, Sam Hornish Jr. and current IRL phenom Danica Patrick, whose biography has given a further boost to karting in recent months.

Like the pros, junior racers of both genders have sponsors and Web sites, engine tuners and paint schemes, backup motors and massive trailers to transport their equipment from one track to the next. They choose the car numbers of their favorite drivers; Christian Elder, fond of expounding upon Stewart's virtues, wears the driver's No. 20 on his kart. They have crew chiefs -- who often double as their fathers -- and they have imposing nicknames: 14-year-old Bobby "Cougar" Ellis of Ashburn regularly races against Jessica "Banzai" Brannam, a national champion from Illinois whose business card reads "I Might Be Small, But I Can Haul."

"Just like kids want to be like Tiger Woods or 'Be Like Mike,' they want to be like their heroes," said Darrell Sitarz, the president of Kart Marketing Group, which puts on an annual industry trade show. "They know exactly how to handle themselves at 5, 6, 7 years old. They see these drivers on TV, whether it's IndyCar or NASCAR or ChampCar or whatever, and they want to be them."

The dreams of junior drivers are hardly limited to NASCAR, which some young racers dismiss as the least interesting form of motorsports because of its repetitive nature. The Woodbridge Kart Club, a local group that is among the oldest and largest karting clubs in the country, sponsors races on long, twisting road courses rather than dirt or pavement ovals, and its junior stars -- who regularly reach speeds of 85 or 90 mph -- more often aspire to careers in the Formula One series. Others speak hopefully of a smorgasbord of minor league motorsports series, or of careers in pit crews or in engineering shops; many say they would drive anything that was offered to them.

To pursue such goals, drivers often give up other sports. Ten-year-old Christopher Hammett of Mechanicsville quit soccer to concentrate on racing; Bobby Ellis gradually gave up football, basketball and baseball; and Will McMillan, 12, of Rising Sun, Md., told his parents he wanted to stop playing Little League "because racing was way more fun."

Karters say they are drawn to the track because they've been watching racing on television their whole lives, because they grew up using diecast cars to recreate multi-car wrecks on living room carpets and because their favorite station is the Speed Channel. They stay in the sport for the thrill of driving 50 mph around ovals or handling tight corners on road courses, because they still dream of being noticed by a car-racing promoter or sponsor, and because high-speed competition becomes "like an addiction, almost," as Kevin Kopp, a senior at Langley High put it. "Pretty much anything I can get my hands on, I'll drive."

The sport, though, presents a host of challenges unique from a youth league soccer game. For one thing, there is the obvious risk. Drivers must wear safety-approved helmets and, in some series, full racing suits. Devotees insist that karting is hardly more dangerous than youth football. Still, there are wrecks and red flags and ambulances; Kevin, a WKA national champion who's attempting to move into auto racing, "has spent more time in infield hospitals than I care to think about," his father, Ray Kopp, said.

Ramona Vickers, whose son, Brian, raced go-karts before eventually landing in NASCAR, vividly recalled a wreck in which her elementary school-aged son flipped several times before being ejected from his kart with a cracked helmet. "I said, 'Let's go home, we've had enough fun, I've had enough of this, let's just go home,' " she said. "He said, 'I'm here to race.' He talked me into it. He proved to be a champion."

Christopher Hammett slammed into a pole this year, knocking the wind out of himself, bringing out emergency medical technicians and giving pause to his father, Jerry.

"It made me think, 'Am I doing this for him or am I doing this for me?' " the father said. "I asked him and he looked at me like I was crazy. He said, 'I want to race.' "

As with other professional sports, the payoffs for elite stars are immense. Three of the 25 highest paid athletes on Forbes's 2004 list were racecar drivers, including Formula One star Michael Schumacher, whose earnings of $80 million were second only to Tiger Woods. Dale Earnhardt Jr., the most popular NASCAR driver, earned $20.1 million, according to Forbes, and most top-tier Nextel Cup drivers earn millions from winnings and endorsements.

"I hope he progresses with it, because I want to retire and drive his motor home to the NASCAR track every week," laughed Charlie Trost, whose 9-year-old son, Trevor, is in his second year of racing. "That's the pipedream, anyhow."