Go, young racers, go

They're called junior dragsters, and they're a group of pint-sized speed demons.

They're the up-and-coming generation of lead footers who have two speeds - stop and hold-on! 

On the last Saturday of every month, they gather at Desert Thunder Raceway to show just how fast small packages can go.

When you hear them coming - and there's not doubt about it, you will hear them coming in their half-scale dragsters, engines booming and their hair on fire - step out of the way, because they're in a hurry to barrel down that 1/8-mile track.

Well, as long as they don't go faster than their age group's regulated time, which, for example, is 12.9 seconds for the youngest class or racers between the ages of 8 and 12 years old. 

But they ain't scared.
Take 9-year-old Jayse Stanaford of Midland, a keen-eyed youngster who flashed a devil-may-care grin as he waited one recent Saturday for his turn to grimace, rumble and roll down that almighty stretch of asphalt, that glorious ribbon of concrete and skid marks.

A helmet in his hand and a full fire-retardant suit covering all four-feet-or-so of him, he watched as an orange 1970s era muscle car peeled out and disappeared down the way in front of a bleached-white cloud of its own fuel-infused power.     

"Really, it's nothing," he shrugged. "All you have to do is go straight down the track."

As he stood there waiting for his first official turn as a junior dragster, Stanaford said it can get competitive out there on that track.

"We're gonna win," his father laughed and chimed in.

"We're gonna try to," the 9-year-old agreed.

Hal Semple, a technical director with the junior dragsters' sponsor West Texas Cruisers who is in charge of keeping racers and races within regulation, said 21 dragsters are signed up to compete in this year's racing series.

On that particular night in May, he said 11 children between the ages of 8 and 14 were signed up to take a turn down the stretch.

"There may be more girls. Let's see how many girls we got," Semple looked at his clipboard. "Yeah. We've got six girls and five boys tonight."

Meet the junior dragster chicks, girls like 14-year-old Bowie Junior High student Alyssa Carter who has been behind the wheel of dragster since she was 10.

The question she was asked was simple: Are girls faster than boys?

She didn't hesitate, not even a second, before succinctly and calmly saying, "Yes."

"It's definitely a lot of fun while you're out there," she said, eyeballing the track and clutching hard on the wheel.

 "It's definitely not something most kids get to do," her father added. "There's no doubt about it."

Mark Peck, father of 8-year-old junior dragster Ryan and a builder of junior dragsters, said the cars are basically just like professional dragsters, only with exactly half of the 300-inch wheelbase and considerably tamer engines with beginning at about 5 horsepower.

"Some of these will probably put out about 30 horsepower," he said, "but they're not supposed to be running them that fast." He looked at Ryan. "We're still trying to slow him down."

Semple said the dragsters range in price from about $3,000 to as high as $11,000.

But the speed of car is not nearly as important as the ability of the driver, he said, because, after all, they are limited in how fast they can go by regulations graduated by age group.   

"The thing about it is it doesn't matter if you have the top-of-the-line car running against a beginner car," Semple said. "It's who has the fastest reaction time" during the staging at the beginning of a race.

But everything - from speed to skill to the battle of the sexes - takes a back seat to safety, he said

Every racer, Semple said, is required to follow explicit instructions and wear tightly monitored safety gear like firesuit, gloves, arm restraints and, of course, helmets.

"The whole deal on all of this is safety, safety, safety," he said. "We've had two cars roll, but there were no injuries because of all the safety. Everything on it is designed to keep them safe. And they are."

Safety is supreme, and it's why some parents, like Mark Peck, have to wait eight excruciating years before they can get their child behind the wheel of a junior dragster.

He laughed and said it took him eight years to build his son's dragster.

"Probably about a year," he said, "just working on it in my free time. I always tell everybody eight years because I wanted to build him one the day he was born."

IF YOU GO
>> What: Junior Dragsters.
>> Where: Desert Thunder Raceway, 7400 W. Interstate 20. 
>> Who: Children between the ages of 8 and 18 years old with a dragster car.
>> When: Fourth Saturday of each month.
>> For information, call 563-9999.