I’ve posted on and off here over the past year as I worked my way into this fabulous sport. A year later and my son, Chris, had his first race. It was an absolute blast. It was as much fun for me to play crew chief as it was for him to race.
We had a few hiccups:
The engine died out of pit lane on his first practice. A super helpful dad in that class helped me increase the idle RPMs so that it runs better cold.
I had the boy drive up on the scale. Apparently that is a big no-no and could break / mis-calibrate the scale so lesson learned.
After we got it going. He did okay at qualifying: 4 out 5. In heat 1, he made one good pass and another kid spun out so he climbed to 2nd. He held on in the final and came in 2nd.
Chris and his sister came to our family through adoption via CPS. Hes a great kid and yesterday was his first personal “achievement” in life. He got to stand on the podium, he got his “piston cup” trophy and the hugs and thanks didn’t stop all day. It was easily a top-ten day in my life and I think the same for him. Big thanks to all the helpful replies and forum posts that I read through to get us introduced.
That’s awesome. 2nd place finish is a big accomplishment! Especially for first time racing .
Anecdotally, the extra curricular thing that seemed to interest the high schools we applied to for Nick the most, was his karting. Every interviewer wanted to hear more.It’s so unusual and I’m pretty sure he’s the only kid in the bunch that had competive motorsports as part of his “story”. I made sure that our karting vid that was sent along with his apps had some pretty good crashes too. Gotta sell the romance. Character building and all that. So, Unexpected benefit from youth karting.
Hehe… you can see your boy holding back pace there in a few spots. I’m guessing a couple races in he’s gonna be blowing by the other kids.
It’s so neat how quickly little kids pick this up.
Just out of curiousity, how do you “teach” kids that little to kart? Are they old enough to absorb instruction or is kid karts more a “let em loose and watch them figure it out” kinda situation until they are older?
He did a few sessions with a racing instructor (Alan Rudolf at SpeedSportz), he had a very methodical way of stepping kids into it safely. Chris picked up on a racing line pretty intuitively.
We also spent a few mo the going to K1 regularly. His first go at that was pretty humorous and harmless.