Ladies and Gentlemen Start Your Engines!

Dust flies as the driver corners the number 66 car alongside the others, his steely gaze focused intently on the track ahead. The black car is adorned with a menacing skull and crossbones, and flames streak down the side in blazing orange.

“He’s only 4-1/2”

Yogi Pohlman comments as grandson Mason Young pilots his car around the track. At 4-1/2, Mason is still too young to officially race his quarter midget. “He has to wait until his birthday, August 10th,” grandma Joan Pohlman explains.

Once that birthday rolls around—look out! Mason will have enough practice laps under his belt to make him a force to be reckoned with on the track. They start ‘em young at the Hulman Mini-Speedway, home of the Terre Haute Quarter Midget Association, where kids age 5 to as old as 16 spend their summer Saturday nights putting the pedal to the metal. Admission to THQMA races is free and open to the public.

A quarter midget is a 1/4-scale version of a midget racer, an open-wheeled car typically raced on dirt or paved oval tracks. Quarter midgets have a fiberglass body and a tubular frame and include safety features such as a roll cage to protect the driver. The cars, which are powered by single-cylinder engines, along with the rules and safety procedures, are designed specifically for kids.

Many well-known names in motorsports began their racing careers by driving quarter midgets. NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon and Bobby Labonte are just two of the success stories who got their start on a 1/20 of a mile dirt track like the THQMA runs on at 13th and Lockport.

“And they say it’s bad luck!” Debbie Van Gilder jokes. She’s talking about the color of daughter Shelby’s car: green. Green is, apparently, not considered to be the ideal color for a race car. And while Shelby would tell you that that’s just superstition, she has had her share of bad luck on the track in her 11 years of racing.

“I flipped several times--end over end, and rolled,” Shelby says of a wreck she had in her younger days. “It was a pretty good one,” Debbie adds, explaining that the incident was more traumatic for Mom than it was for the driver. “Her biggest thing is she wants to know if it’s broke--can she continue?” Debbie says as Shelby nods in agreement.

Shelby, a sophomore at Terre Haute South High School, says that her friends think it’s cool that she races, but that sometimes guys aren’t convinced that she really does. “Most of them don’t believe that I race, especially because I’m a cheerleader, too,” she chuckles.

“It’s really family oriented,” race mom Krissi Dillion says. Although the kids are the ones racing, parents and grandparents do everything from push-starting the cars and handling pit stops to running the concession stand and scoring. Her son, Carson, is a third generation driver. “The big kids help the little kids,” Debbie adds. “The kids are competitive on the track, but as soon as they get off the track, they’re all friends”

Shelby agrees. “You make lots of friends. You have lots of fun. It’s a good family sport—you get lots of time with your family,” she says.

Driver Cameron Wallace is a student at Van Buren Elementary School by day, and a race car driver by night. “This is my second full year,” the young racer states. THQMA competitors have the option of earning “racing bucks” rather than trophies. The bucks can be exchanged for gift cards at the end of the season; a perk that Cameron counts among his favorites.

This year he hopes to win enough racing bucks to pay for a new LEGO set, or maybe a newer starter for his car. But overall, he says that the best part of racing is that it’s just plain fun to do. “It’s just having fun, that’s what it’s all about.”