Arriving teams eyed the track with equal parts awe and excitement as they set up their bases, renewed friendships with their competitors and worked out their team strategy. A couple practice sessions gave everyone the chance to see just how amazing this track would be, and what it would take to master.

After practice and qualifying, it was time for the race.  15 teams roared off the line in freshly prepared karts decked out in brand new sponsorship livery. You could feel the air vibrate as they rumbled by, the smell of rubber and combustion mixed in to complete the experience, with every spectator on their feet.

As the day progressed drivers split their attention between mastering the course, duking it out with other racers, and watching or listening for team orders. Meanwhile, team managers focused on fuel consumption, position gaps and gauging their teams’ performance.  Is my driver getting tired? Do we have enough fuel for one more lap? The delicious smell of burgers and brats on the grill and the sounds of laughter and loud boasts also hinted that teams weren’t focusing exclusively on strategy.

Most drivers completed 2 or 3 1 hour stints, with sore arms, stiff legs, and huge smiles for their efforts. Late into the evening, there were still several heated battles for position, and the checkered flag waved sooner than many wanted. “It can’t be over already, we were gaining!”

The awards ceremony involved lots of back slapping, laughs, and pictures, and of course champagne, trophies and pretty girls. As people were packing up, everywhere you could still hear snippets of excited drivers recounting their individual war stories, complete with “he did this, so I did that” hand gestures. But the one thing that was heard practically everywhere from everyone….“When’s the next one?”

There is no doubt that sports can greatly enhance a kids development. They can teach teamwork, discipline, the value of hard work, and a sense of fair play. Sports like football, baseball, soccer, and hockey have been a major component in the shaping of American’s self identity for more than a century. They are each wonderful in their own right, but they don’t serve everyone equally and in many cases serve to alienate kids who weren’t blessed with the gifts of size, strength, speed, or agility. As a guy who weighed 64 pounds in the 9th grade, I was constantly reminded that I was just short of worthless when participating in team sports. I endured all the jokes about being a horse jockey, a convenient armrest for taller players, and was even the “tossed object” in a couple of impromptu midget tossing contests. Suffice to say that I never found great joy in athletics.

Not having excelled in team sports as a kid left me ill prepared for the critical role of helping my son Austin to develop athletically. While other fathers were outside tossing the football or playing catch with their sons, I was inside playing with Austin and his toy truck collection. By the time he was in grade school, many of his peers had already started playing different sports and before I knew it, I had put Austin at a competitive disadvantage with his peers. He was nearly 8 years old when I realized that I had not fulfilled a big part of my job as a parent. Thats when I made the greatest discovery of his lifetime – Go Karting.

In go karting, I have found a sport that has allowed my son to gain all the benefits of a competitive activity without paying the price imposed on him by his less than perfect birthright. Karting is a fast paced, action packed sport that has taught Austin the value of competition, fair play, teamwork, and dedication to constant incremental improvement. It has given him an incredible sense of confidence, self worth, and focus. It has helped him to grow into a fine young man who can assert himself when it is needed, and exercise patience strategically when it is beneficial. It has taught him many valuable lessons about success and failure. He has learned that even when you do everything correctly bad things can happen, but through persistence and focus you can achieve things you only once dreamed of. He has learned that second place in a hard fought competition can be more rewarding than an unchallenged victory and has found far more pleasure in making bad equipment look good than winning in the fastest kart. He has learned that adaptability and hard work are more valuable than pure talent and consequently you should never stop learning. Beyond the things it has taught him, racing has provided him motivation to work hard in all the other aspects of his life (school, chores, etc.) and thus is a pillar in the foundation upon which he is developing his character. As a bonus, taking Austin go-kart racing has made me unofficially the coolest dad on the block.

Austin competes at Summit Point Kart in Summit Point, WV throughout the spring, summer, and fall. Summit Point provides karts and safety equipment in an “arrive and drive” arrangement which makes it surprisingly affordable and headache free to compete in their racing leagues. “Arrive and Drive” is just what it sounds like – Summit Point Kart provides all the equipment (karts, racing suits, helmets, etc.) and you simply arrive and drive. There are karts and a special track for kids as young as 5 years old, and faster more sophisticated Karts for teenagers and adults. The adult karts run on a larger circuit than the junior karts and some of them can reach speeds up to 85 mph. Let me say that 85mph is mind-blowing when you are 2 inches off the ground.  Summit Point offers classes to teach the young ones how to drive and compete safely. Upon graduation, kids are eligible to compete in  weekly racing events in a league format. There are also Adult, and Junior racing leagues available.  The leagues are run by Jens Scott who owns the facility. Jens is the son of two time world champion Formula V driver Bill Scott and has been around racing since he was a baby. Jens’ approach is that of a latter day aescetic or zen master, teaching a purist racing philosophy to his followers who make a weekly pilgrimage to his retreat in the mountains of West Virginia. Before each racing league, Jens reviews the rules, emphasizing that success in racing is a matter of mastering the art of clean passes and using your mind to outsmart your competitors, not in dive bombing people in the corners or bumping people out of the way to get past them. The emphasis is on safety and fairness and Jens and his staff really deliver a great time to all their guests. I can’t think of any place where I see a greater concentration of happy, enthusiastic, and energized people. I often tell Jens he should take a page from Disneyworld’s playbook and put a sign of the entrance to Summit Point Kart that says “The Happiest Place On Earth”.

What makes karting so different from other sports is that a well run program like the one at Summit Point strives to create as egalitarian an environment as possible so that the competition is won by the driver who has the most developed skill. The kart is the great equalizer – neither favoring the biggest and strongest, nor penalizing the smallest and weakest. In karting, it is persistence, mental focus, adaptability, and endurance that trump size and strength. I have seen kids in leg braces beat athletes across the finish line, younger sisters beating their older brothers, and with great regularity, sons passing their fathers. For many, it is truly a family sport that bridges generations and gender by allowing everyone to compete with one another regardless of their age or sex.

This is not to say that karting is not a physically demanding sport – it is grueling. Driving a kart is like grabbing the collar of a steel beast that wants to go as fast as it can in a straight line, and bending its will to yours using all your mental and physical strength- lap after lap after lap. Most people are wiped out – both mentally and physically after only 10 minutes behind the wheel.  Reaching speeds up to 85 miles per hour, braking efficiently, and snaking your way through turns as fast as you can takes a tremendous  toll on the body. The lateral G-forces whipsaw you back and forth as you fight to keep the kart on the racing line. Core body strength and the ability to endure are all important  but the mental toughness required for racing is  unlike any other sport I can think of. There are no timeouts, or huddles, or line changes to give you a chance to relax and recouperate. When behind the wheel, the margins of error are so slim and the stakes so high that  you simply can not let your concentration wane. If you do, someone will take your position, and if you are any good, there are 10-20 people behind you ready to do just that on any given lap.

Karting is also great for teaching emotional control. When watching a football game, I often marvel at the hyper-aggressive chest pounding, the boastful gloating, and the glaze of testosterone that covers the eyes of the competitors. That type of aggressive posturing is useful on the football field but is counterproductive in almost every other aspect of life. By contrast, successful racers develop an almost preternatural ability to remain calm in the midst of extreme chaos, and at the peak of competition. Why? You simply can not be angry behind the wheel of a kart and remain competitive. Consider this…the blink of an eye takes about 3/100ths of a second. In kart racing that is an eternity. It is not uncommon for the top 5 or 6 fastest lap times in a qualifying session to be within 3/100ths of a second – and that is over the course of a 60 second lap.  There can be less than a 1% difference between 1st and 5th place. Drivers who lose control of their emotions on the track make minor changes to the way they drive (braking a fraction of a second later, turning in to a corner 5 feet sooner) and those changes make small but extremely significant changes in their results. The difference between winning and losing often comes down to emotional control and if you don’t have it, the kart and the clock and will let you know right away.

Karting at Summit Point Kart has benefitted my son and I in so many that it is difficult to keep from rambling on. I could not put a price on the positive change it has made in my son’s outlook and self perception, and the joy it has given me is beyond words. If you are looking for a great activity for your child, check out Summit Point Kart, you won’t be sorry.

Make Your Company part of it by sponsoring a racing kart at SPK! Every year, millions of dollars are spent to put company names on race cars in NASCAR, F1, IndyCar and many other forms of racing. Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!

Get that same excitement and kind of exposure for a whole year for less than the price of a newspaper ad!

What kind of exposure will I get?

• Over 10,000 unique customers on-site, many of them racing in YOUR kart
• Customers from DC, Baltimore, Northern VA, and all over the country.
• Over 17,000 pictures posted on Facebook
• Over 600 videos on YouTube
• Over 70,000 Facebook reaches every week

An exciting new option for 2013, combine a sponsorship with a corporate or special event!

• Multi-race Grand Prix with your company’s kart as the centerpiece.
• Kick it off with a grand unveiling of your company’s kart
• Winner gets the honor of a victory lap.
• Pictures with your Company Kart prominently displayed.

What kinds of companies sponsor?

• Local Services (insurance, project management)
• Tourism (Lodging, Camping, Entertainment)
• Extreme Sports (rock climbing, motocross)
• Related Industry (LV Grand Prix, Wheelto-Wheel)

2012 featured sponsored karts from:

• Allsports Grand Prix
• AV-ED Flight School
• KOA
• Holiday Inn Express
• Marriot Town Place Suites
• NASA
• SCCA
• Arthur Murray Dance Studio
• Tomahawk MX
• Catrow Construction
• Lehigh Valley Grand Prix
• Vertical Rock Climbing Center
• Dacoda Projects LLC
• Nationwide Insurance
• Peace Maker National
• Wheel to Wheel Racing
• CNC Engine Dynamics

Pricing:

• First kart stickers and art – $400
• Sticker Application – FREE
• Every kart after first, same artwork – $200
• Advanced art/design – additional costs may apply
• Sponsorship/Event package – please call!

To become part of the Summit Point Kart Sponsorship Program Contact:
Jens Scott
1-540-878-7196
jens@summitpointkart.com
http://www.facebook.com/jensscott

I can’t believe how far I’ve come along since that cooooold weekend in March, and how much fun I’ve packed into so very few months. When I started, I was super gung ho about all the technical aspects of racing; lines, braking points, apexes, throttle control, blah blah blah. And there was so much going on I wasn’t sure where to start to improve my times. I remember coming out of a session, looking at my times, and comparing them to a few veterans, and wondering, “How in the hell did they get around the track so fast?”. Was it their braking? Throttle? Their line? Their steering? Their kart? I was several seconds slower than them – but I couldn’t see how it was possible to make the kart go faster without killing myself. But man, I was hooked. So much to learn, so much to improve on, so much faster to go.

I started to come every other Sunday when SPK holds it’s “open to everyone” single day league race. I lost terribly for several of the initial races. But I learned so much by watching how the really fast people were making their way around the track. It provided me with so much information which I internalized and took what I saw and then experimented with it in my next stint. And I got better, pretty quickly too. Eventually, I wasn’t afraid about hitting a tire wall, because I knew where the kart was going to go, and where it wouldn’t. With each league race, I was able to improve my times enough so that I could keep up with the rest of the pack of racers. And then I started to learn actual race craft. Because even though I could lay down the same lap times as a few other racers, those other more experienced racers would blow by me on turns. But every pass was a learning moment, and every race gave me a dozen different lessons to learn from.

Some point in the midst of all this, I decided to become a VIP. You basically get to ride however much you want, whenever you want. All you can Kart… And racing at Summit Point became less about how many rides I got in during a day, and more about the quality of the ride. Some days you have a rough day, and call it quits early to avoid frustration. Others you’re on point, and just keep going at it, trying to learn different lines, smoother hands, better brake points. The VIP gave me the freedom and peace of mind to just enjoy myself while I’m there, and stop worrying about “credit” vs. “KTP” or “KTFU”. And, I didn’t have to pay anything to participate in the SPK sponsored enduros. IT was really sweet. Very early on, SPK had their Spring Enduro, the SPK 500. I knew from the beginning that they were going to have it, but didn’t think I’d be good enough soon enough to actually do it. But after only a few weekends, I felt comfortable enough to race it. Luckily, some fellow league regulars were looking to fill a spot and I joined in. That race, and all subsequent enduros have been some of the coolest things I’ve done in my life. It brings real endurance racing strategy to the masses. And, my team hasn’t done too terrible! Placing in 6th, 7th and 8th overall. Not bad for a team that took on a rookie kart racer.

Another thing that has made this year at SPK enjoyable is the camaraderie of the regular racers at SPK. SPK wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if it weren’t for the people who regularly go there to race. Good people, good racers, great staff too. I certainly haven’t improved so much that I’m setting records but I’ve gone from being a really slow racer to being able to easily qualify for the 250s, and putting down pretty respectable times. I can’t wait for things to wind up again next year. I look very forward to racing new and old faces. It’ll be another great year.