May 5-11, 2005

fine print

Go Cart, Go

by Doron Taussig

It was an atypical spring Saturday morning on The Parkway this week. Only the most intrepid runners braved the rain on Kelly Drive. Museum-goers hurried inside rather than lingering on the magnificent steps. And at the traffic circle, inner-city black youth honed their go-carting skills in the hope of some day becoming professional racecar drivers.

The Urban Youth Racing School (UYRS), established in 1998, aims to introduce motor sports to disadvantaged kids. Headquartered in Philadelphia, the program is 10 weeks long (five weeks of racing and mechanics classes, five weeks of track sessions) and free for all participants.

Saturday was the big race: the first annual Grand Prix of Philadelphia. Twenty UYRS participants were competing to advance to the East Coast finals of Red Bull's national "Driver Search." Red Bull is working to develop American talent for Formula One, an international racing circuit that, unlike Nascar, features single-seat, cockpit race cars, and is currently ignored in the U.S. "Right now we believe that Formula One is not popular in America because there are no Americans involved," explains Red Bull's Paul Tashjian. And so the teens, who rode one at a time, competing for the best lap time, were really racing for something.

The cars the teens were racing were miniature versions of Formula One cars: single-seat, mechanized go-carts provided by UYRS that, according to the program, can go up to 90 mph. A makeshift race course was constructed on The Parkway out of plastic blockades and hay bales, and on the sidewalk in front of the Art Museum, the parents and siblings of the drivers mingled beneath blue tents. The atmosphere was a strange hybrid of hip-hop and NASCAR cultures. A Power 99 DJ bumped Nas and distributed T-shirts, while the MC, former Eagles linebacker and CBS-3 correspondent Garry Cobb, lumbered around the sidelines with a microphone. He walked right by Walter Elliott, a short, wide, fast-talking racing journalist from New Jersey who had come to cover the event.

"Some big stars do come up through go-carting," Elliott blurted by way of explaining his presence. "You take Lake Speed, from North Carolina. He's no relation to Scott Speed, who's making big news, of course."

When the races began, Cobb gave a half-hearted play-by-play, and, more determinedly, teased the families of the riders. When a young man named LeAntione Washington, 15, took his turn, Cobb wondered aloud, "Why did his mother name him LeAntione, instead of just Antione?" The mother headed over to Cobb, saying, "I'm going to have to check him," but found herself overwhelmed by the big man's repeated insistence that she tell him her son's nickname.

"I know you're not calling him LeAntione," Cobb said. "What's his nickname?"

Ms. Washington muttered something, and as poor LeAntione began his second lap, Cobb called out, "Come on, Moop-moop!"

The parents present said that they were very pleased with the UYRS program, and though they tended only to watch the track when their own children were racing, the teenaged drivers were very engaged. Jason Simmons, 17, came back to the tents after his run and declared that he was certain he'd finished in the top five. When asked how he knew, he explained that he could tell how fast a driver went by listening to how long he or she stayed on the gas before decelerating for a turn. Simmons, who wore a full racing outfit and a neck guard, has been in UYRS for six years now, and explains that he got involved because he "wanted to be different." He finished first.

Of course, there had to be losers, too. One boy, whose name will be left out of the paper, had a crowd of women in tow to cheer for him. They shouted loudly as he went down the straightaway and crashed directly into the wall of the oval. His chances of moving on were shot, but the boy gamely went on with his second lap. As he drove by his throng a second time, they cheered exactly as they had the first time he went around. And, though he was zipping away and wearing a big helmet, an observer could make out the boy shaking his head.