Where can Karting take a good young driver?

Generally nowhere!

For a kid with a few bucks from his family the next step could be the Skip Barber Series. They have an annual "Shoot Out" kart race and the winner gets a full season with Barber Motorsports. This is the car they race after they are trained to move from karts to an open wheeled racer. A kid as young as 13 can make the move up. None have, but a couple of 16 year olds have won it. By the way, the upper age limit is 25.

The Barber Series is sponsored by Mazda and the full season scholarship is worth over $200,000. 200K covers no more than 14 races and the winner can pick and choose when and where to participate. The money covers the car, the crew and it's transport, care and feeding. The winner pays for their own travel and food. Considering the races are held coast to coast and in Canada and are scheduled about every two weeks, sending a kid and a chaperon from California to Quebec and back and then to Atlanta two weeks later is costly.

Three things are important for the young driver, win races, don't crash and don't break the cars. Not much else matters. Sure they give prizes for "most improved driver", "fastest qualifier" but winning, no wrecks and not breaking the car are the things that really count. Other than the scholarship winner's full season, Barber awards some partial rides. Most of the fields at the races are made of "wannabees" who rent the car for a few races a season just for the hell of it.  The rental of a Barber car is $3,750. for the weekend, practice, time trials and two races. To qualify for a rental you have to take one of Barber's schools for about 3 grand. Any kid with big aspirations doesn't spend much time in the Barber Series. So, where does our fictional 16 year old go next?

If they are really good they may get a test with a development program operated by a big time racing team like Roush-Fenway, Andretti, Rayhal and a few young Americans get Formula 3 looks in Europe or get a shot with the development programs of the Formula 1 teams. What if a good young driver, our 16 year old from California let's say. Great record in karts, won the Barber Scholarship and finished just out of the top 5. The book on our fictional kid is he or she needs more wheel time and track time. Here is where they go if the family is wealthy, really wealthy.

Formula 1000

This series runs 24 races most years in conjunction with various other events. Half the races are in the east a few in the Midwest and the balance on the West Coast. Outside the series these cars qualify as Formula B in SCCA, so additional races can be run. The cars cost around 50k and an additional 35 for an engine contract with one of the manufacturers. The engines are sealed, if they break they are exchanged. The number of tires for each event is limited to 6 and crews are limited to 4 members. All of the rules and limits are designed to hold costs down. To participate the average team spends over $500,000 dollars. Is it any wonder the field is made up of older rich guys and the sons and daughters of wealthy families? The prize money wouldn't pay for the diesel fuel for the team transport! Let's say our kid wins in Formula 1000, what's next?

Indy Lights

This is the professional ranks, our kid probably won't get a look until he is at least 18 and has won a lot of races in open wheel cars. You don't need to be rich to race here, just really, really good. There are rumors that a few people have bought their way in to Indy Lights as they are with some of the other pro series and even Formula One. I've often wondered about drivers who spend entire careers at the back of the pack, haven't you? If you are a winner in Indy Lights you are going to get a ride in the big show, unless once again, you don't win, crash cars and break them, too. You have to race a bunch to get to Lights and that costs big, big money. Indy Lights is the equivalent of AAA baseball, you have to be skilled, tough and have enough talent to make the big league club and you can have all that and never make it, ever.

Then there are the various NASCAR series, Nationwide, the truck series, ARCA and so on. The same rules apply. The day when a kid could build a reputation on a local dirt track and end up at Indy is over. Accordingly, the days when a guy like Phil Hill could run on road racing courses in California, get noticed and end up winning the World Championship are gone too. There are 3 young Americans working their way through the politics of the European racing world this season, I hope they make it.

As Parnelli Jones once said, "you have to drive something fast, loud and make them notice you" all that Parnelli, and you still have to win, don't crash and never break a car!

If anybody has a spare 3-4 million, give me a call. I have two grandsons, who are smart, tough, athletic and are willing to learn. If they win races, don't crash and never break a car who knows you might end up with a piece of a American Formula One World Champion.

Thinking about Karting and my short career as a winning driver.

What's with all my automotive posts anyway? I love cars, I was raised in a car dealership and I now own a driving school, plus given the choice I'd drive to Boston from LA rather than fly.

I follow Formula 1, Indycar, DTM and NASCAR racing. I'll get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to watch a Formula 1 race live on Speed. (I don't follow the races around the country and if I had a motorhome I wouldn't drive to Talledega for a race and get caught on YouTube pissing off the roof or anything like that. I did suggest, to my wife that if she wanted to go to England, it would be nice if we scheduled the trip around the Goodwood Festival of  Speed.) 

There is one thing that all successful modern drivers have in common, from Jimmy Johnson to Lewis Hamilton, no matter what they are racing now they started in karts.
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This is the very first Go Kart, built in 1956, powered by a small West Bend 2 stroke engine. Note the hand brake.

This is what the early Kart races looked like:

I remember these races well because I raced in them, the engine in my first Kart had 21/2 horsepower and I thought it was a rocket ship. The first summer I raced against adults and a few other kids, I was 11 years old. I won more than I lost. Over the winter my Dad and I built a new Fox with a 9 hp West Bend 2 stroke. We tested it in March and yes it was much faster. Because at 12 I weighed half as much as the adults I raced against, they'd yell at me all the time, then as it is today, light is faster! The new Fox was fast, but I wanted  a faster cart. I sold the 3 month old Fox and built (I was now a much better kart mechanic than the old man) another new Fox with a live rear axle and twin West Bends. I bought 2 new 9hp engines, had a machine shop port and relieve them, added tuned exhaust and highly modified diaphragm carburetors. According to the manuals and tuning magazines I read and re-read the little engines were now putting out about 11hp each. The Kart was a monster and I won a lot of races on a regional level in the Midwest. I figured in a few years I'd be racing at Indy or joining Dan Gurney at All American Racers. A kid can dream, right?

Off the track, I drag raced a 409 Chevy Super Sport from a rolling start and murdered him. One night at midnight, a couple of friends of mine and I loaded the kart into my Mom's station wagon (no driver's licenses yet) drove it out to 32nd Ave South and Belmont Rd. I fired it up and drove it back down Belmont to our house at 816 and straight into the garage. Imagine a quiet summer night and you hear two screaming chainsaws flying by your house at 80mph. Cops were everywhere searching, my friends and I were sitting on the front porch watching them and laughing. Never got caught.

I built a "chain gang" by adding a third engine to my kart, when you could get the engines in synch it was unreal. I remember practicing and trying to adjust the carbs while negotiating the track, too much trouble to try to keep it running. I raced it at Brainerd Speedway, won the pole and couldn't finish the race. In frustration I had pitted and took the chain off the middle engine, then pushed the kart so hard the right hand engine blew a rod. I still have the dent in my right elbow where a chunk of aluminum from the engine tore through my jacket.

My karting career ended with my Dad's first heart attack, he was on his back for a long time and there was no money for racing or much of anything for awhile. I learned a lot while karting, I got handy with tools, got a good grasp of how things work and best of all it made me a much better, safer and defensive driver.

Here is what a modern racing Kart looks like, the 2012 Lotus powered by a Rotax snow machine engine.

Carbon fiber, adjustable suspension, disc brakes and with certain engine and transmission combinations speeds to over 150mph. Damn I'd love to drive one!