[LEADERS EDGE]

The only reason I would like to see the age raised is because it is sad to see someone who is 23 out of the sport because of a variety of reasons, but then again they are young enough to do something else if they would like.

Kids have been burnt and killed in Stockers and 600's and on Four Wheelers, so whats the difference?

I think the sports youth(In racing) is hurting the crowds somewhat because we haven't found a way to get the youth fan base away from the x-games style events and it's hard for adults to identify with someone 10-30 years younger than them.

As far as getting hurt, I have to agree with Rick Young.

I would like to see 18 as a minimum, but in the end it doesn't matter.

---------- Post added at 08:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:32 AM ----------

Jones is right about the jealousy aspect. I hear all of the time how it's not fair that the kids start with all of the best, but that is their families right.

Once the family signs that paper work and the kid straps in, in my opinion he is no different than a 50 year old. He may not know the risk, but his parents do and if they don't care why should I?

Auto Racing is such an odd sport. Is is one of the only professional sports where anyone with enough coin can participate against the best. School yard ballers going aginst the sports' Micheal Jordan's.

The funny part is that the School Yard ballers always want the rim lowered for themselves but raised for the Jordan's. Just how it is.

Like I said, I am not for 13 year olds wheeling a sprinter, but I am not their parent.

[LEADERS EDGE]

Duplicate

[Charles Nungester]

Personally. I think its a decision of the parents and racer or the track itself. I think there are probably 11 year olds who could wheel a sprinter out there. Gullick did when he was 12. Some of the best of the best Today are these young guys like Clauson, Whitt, WIndom, Hunter ect. That started early. Im sure a lot of them had a ton of experience at other forms as well.

I just don't think its a decision anyone but those involved directly can make.

I will go this far. Before Cages, Power Steering and a much lighter designed to absorb impact tube framing, I don't think
1. That it would be possible for a early teen to handle em and 2. A Parent wouldn't think twice about NOT putting them in a car.
Chuck

---------- Post added at 09:36 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 AM ----------

Originally Posted by SUPERDUKE Let me say that most race fans go to see race drivers with experence not kids! Why do you think tonys nascar race is sold out! Names!!!!!! Not a bunch of rich kids starting out! Think about it! How many of this kids could go out and get started driving race cars without there parents money??? Pay to play! Hell you can't buy these kids a beer for another 7 years!

How much experience did you have when you jumped in a SPrinter or Midget Duke? Honest question and no insult intended. Some of the kids have been racing everything from Karts and Quarters from FOUR YEARS OLD. By 12 the've seen everything but the mega horspower and Id argue that Karts are faster than many other forms of short track racing on a lot of tracks.

Chuck

[Charles Nungester]

Originally Posted by SUPERDUKE Let me say that most race fans go to see race drivers with experence not kids! Why do you think tonys nascar race is sold out! Names!!!!!! Not a bunch of rich kids starting out! Think about it! How many of this kids could go out and get started driving race cars without there parents money??? Pay to play! Hell you can't buy these kids a beer for another 7 years!

How much experience did you have when you jumped in a SPrinter or Midget Duke? Honest question and no insult intended. Some of the kids have been racing everything from Karts and Quarters from FOUR YEARS OLD. By 12 the've seen everything but the mega horspower and Id argue that Karts are faster than many other forms of short track racing on a lot of tracks.

Chuck

[Cale88]

Originally Posted by SUPERDUKE Let me say that most race fans go to see race drivers with experence not kids! Why do you think tonys nascar race is sold out! Names!!!!!! Not a bunch of rich kids starting out! Think about it! How many of this kids could go out and get started driving race cars without there parents money??? Pay to play! Hell you can't buy these kids a beer for another 7 years!

Duke just wondering but how many people racing nascar didnt start with their parents money? Mark Martin being one of the older guys in nascar wins the asa rookie of the year at 18 years old, so your telling me he saved enough money himself when he was in school to go asa racing at 18 years old and dads money had nothing to do with it?

Hunter Scott Brayton's go-kart flipped, sending him sliding helmet-first down the track into foam-rubber safety bags.


It was a frightening crash that had his mother, Teri, clenching her fists as she watched from the pits at Michiana Raceway Park near South Bend, Ind.


Hunter's father, Todd, a former International Motor Sports Association driver, wasn't sure he wanted any more of his son's racing career, either.



But Hunter got up, dusted himself off, checked his torn race suit and unbuckled his scraped-up helmet, the visor suffering from a serious case of road rash.



"Stuff happens," said Hunter, a 10-year-old redhead with a winning smile. "Someone got a little greedy, spun, and I got hit. You can't do a lot about that."


This was June, and the next weekend, Hunter made up for the disappointment. He won his first national kart race at MRP, showing he has inherited the Brayton passion for racing, handed down from his grandfather Lee Brayton to uncle Scott Brayton and his dad, Todd.


To be honest, Todd and Teri Brayton easily could have walked away from the whole thing at MRP, and who could blame them? Todd, 47, was driving to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway from his home in Coldwater on May 17, 1996when he heard on the radio that his brother Scott had been killed during practice for the Indy 500. He had planned to play golf with Scott, who had won the pole position for the race, and had Scott's golf clubs in his car.



"You never forget a moment like that," Todd said this week. "Scott was my best friend, my business partner. He was a lousy golf player, but a great driver and person."



After losing a brother, why allow your only child to go racing?



"I do have a lot of people look at me and say: 'How could you let your son do that -- race?' " Todd said. "But we're not parents who forced him to drive. He just took to it like a duck to water on a pond."



Teri carries a pocket angel -- a metal oval with an angel carved on it -- to Hunter's races, and she won't deny her concern.



"There's a lot of fear and anxiety when Hunter is in the go-kart," said Teri, 46. "I'm his mother, and I'm very nervous when he runs down into Turn 1 at 70 miles per hour."



Lee Brayton, who attempted to qualify three times for the Indy 500 in the early 1970s but failed to make the field, sees it this way.



"Some people consider racing as taking an extra chance in life," said Lee, 76, who ran his race team and a successful gravel-pit business for many years in Coldwater before a slumping economy virtually shut down both.



"I don't think of it like that," he said. "You can be afraid to go to town, cross the street. Scott lived for his racing. It's the only thing he dreamed of doing. I never got in the way of that. I raced until I was 38. Hunter was upside down one weekend, won the next. He's a racer."



Hunter will compete next at MRP in the Mini-Max class Oct. 3-4. He finished third there in his last outing in August during a World Karting Association weekend. He has years ahead of him in karts before he can switch to open-wheel cars, but there's no holding him back.



"I want to be like Scott, Dad and Grandpa," said Hunter, a fifth-grade student at Quincy Middle School. "I like winning. I like the speed. And I like to beat my friends. I'm behind in points right now, and I just want to get better."



Hunter has been to Indy every year of his life with his parents, his first taste of the speedway as a 5-month-old in 1999, sitting in a bouncy chair. It was as a toddler there that he spotted a go-kart in the garage area.



"He pointed it out and wanted one," Todd said. "We waited a few years before buying him a used kart."



Since starting seriously in karts in 2008, Hunter has shown the right stuff to take him a long way as a racer.



At his grandfather's race shop in Coldwater this week, he looked every bit an Indy driver as he sunk into Scott's white Penske PC6 Cosworth, which Scott drove to 16th place as a rookie at Indy in 1981 after running as high as ninth.



"I want to race at Indy," Hunter said. "I want to win an Indy 500 for Scott."



A few miles from Brayton Racing in Coldwater, Scott Everts Brayton rests in a family plot at Oak Grove Cemetery, alongside Cemetery Lake, a pair of crossed checkered flags marking his tombstone.



He was 37 when he died, one of the most loved and admired drivers in Gasoline Alley, a driver who won his first pole at Indianapolis in 1995, when the CART veteran averaged 231.604 m.p.h.



Former Speedway CEO Tony George led the funeral procession for Scott through the streets of Coldwater in a Dodge Viper, while hundreds lined the route from the United Methodist Church to the cemetery.



"I'm sad my uncle died," said Hunter, paying his respects at the cemetery alongside his parents. "But I'm kind of happy I'm with him today."



When Scott died at Indianapolis, Todd said he prayed.



"I asked God for a son," said Todd, who had been married to Teri for 12 years before Hunter arrived.



"When Hunter had his accident, I wanted him to tell me, 'Dad, I'd like to go home.' Instead he said, 'Dad, please don't use this as a reason for us not to come back and race.'



"I won't deny him that opportunity."

[Charles Nungester]

Heres a 12 year study on Go Kart injuries now it does include Fun Karts (Open to the public) It's in PDF format But 19,000 injuries are pretty amazing stats. I had a friend once have his eyes knocked out on a Quad Runner. Do they have to be 18 to ride those too? I've seen people hit trees ect on them.

http://www.cpsc.gov/LIBRARY/gokart.pdf

From the article on Karts.

There were 231 go-cart/fun-kart related deaths of all ages,
reported to CPSC from these sources during the years 1985- 1996.
One hundred and fifty-five cases (67%) were to children under the
age of 15 years old.

The thing about this is the total number of karts and drivers ridden over the period. It would be much easier to estimate the number of sprints and number of races vs. THE Entire Kart world and Entire Kart number of riders.

[Dick Monahan]

On previous threads, I have suggested that banning power steering would go a long way to solving the problem. :-)

My own kids saw many midget races as a result of being forced to accompany me (they were too young to be left home alone) and, perhaps as a result, have absolutely no interest in it. Two of them are Cup fans, but that came later.

My chief objection is that it has lowered the sport in my eyes. Instead of being 10% car and 90% driver, it's now the other way around. Up through at least the seventies, there was no way a 14-year-old was going to beat Hinnershitz or Bettenhausen or Jones or whomever. There was too much skill required, and that skill had to be learned in many hours of seat time. While I still enjoy the spectacle, it's not the same. That's one reason I don't attend as many races as I once did, and I don't think I'm alone.

[Racer9bro]

"My chief objection is that it has lowered the sport in my eyes. Instead of being 10% car and 90% driver, it's now the other way around."

No disrespect Dick but I have to dissagree with the 90% car 10% driver scenario. I'll take 10% from the driver & give it to the car for power steering & a couple other inovations that have made it a bit easier to wheel a sprint. Now those inovations have just made it a bit easier to DRIVE the car not easier to Win or to run up front with the big boys. 80% driver picking the right line to run, 80% driver throttle control, 80% driver to know when , where & how to go for the win or the big move, 80% driver giving feed back to the crew to get the car set up for him/her to be fast, 80% driver admitting he /she screwd up & crashed or screwed up & gave the win away, 80% driver to get that car into victory lane. I think the majority of the youg guns we are discussing are winners not just drivers & they have proven that before they ever strap into a sprintcar.

[Dick Monahan]

Originally Posted by Racer9bro ...I have to dissagree with the 90% car 10% driver scenario. I'll take 10% from the driver & give it to the car for power steering & a couple other inovations that have made it a bit easier to wheel a sprint...

The next time some vintage cars are at a sprint show, put them side by side. Today's cars have dozens of adjustments to tune the car to the driver. The old-timers simply wrestled the car they had. Maybe 90-10 is a little exaggerated, but it's a huge difference. There was a reason most of the good drivers were built like Foyt, with huge upper bodies; that's what it took to control those cars.