Inspiration and skill are the first gears for youths dreaming of a career in auto racing.
But the pair aren’t enough to make it. Money must play a role in a racer’s attempt to rise from kart racing to major tracks like World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Ill.
Bubba Wallace, who competes for the 23/XI racing team owned by driver Denny Hamlin and retired NBA superstar and Charlotte Hornets owner Michael Jordan, knows that the course to big-time racing begins with the “very expensive” hobby of youth kart racing.
Karting is road racing in open-wheel, four-wheeled vehicles known as go-karts or shifter karts.
Unaeze said Wallace is an inspiration for his wanting to race, adding that “I have to race… it has been my dream since I was a little kid,” said the 12-year-old.
Wallace joined David Steward II, founder of The Lion Forge, a St. Louis-based, transmedia studio, in announcing an $8,000 Raceway Gives Ignite Series scholarship for Josiah Unaeze to begin his karting career.
“You have to start young,” Wallace said.
“That’s why having a scholarship like this is great.”
Unaeze said Wallace is an inspiration for his wanting to race, adding that “I have to race.”
“It has been my dream since I was a little kid,” said the 12-year-old Unaeze.
Wallace said he got his start at 9 years old on the kart racing level.
“My kart did not look as cool as this one,” he said.
Steward II said he and his father, WWT Chair and Founder David Steward, were determined to bring a NASCAR Cup event to the St. Louis area.
“We want to see great racing, and we want to foster a new generation. We want to see more diversity in racing.”
Wallace said his climb to success involves “great sponsors,” including the Stewards and WWT, which was his lead sponsor during the years he drove with the Richard Petty Motorsports team.
“David Steward was the first person to tell me, “We are getting a cup race at Gateway.”
“To see his dream come full circle [with the Enjoy Illinois 300] is great.”
The track’s name was changed in 2020 after World Wide Technology acquired naming rights for the track.
Wallace, who finished second in the Daytona 500 in February, hopes to qualify in a top 10 slot for Sunday afternoon’s race. He is not discouraged that he has not captured his first checkered flag of the 2022 season. He won the 2021 Talladega Superspeedway Fall race, becoming the second Black driver to win in a NASCAR Cup Series race.
“We’re getting there,” he said of the season.
“The car is really fast. We’re going to hopefully redeem ourselves.”
Wallace reminded Unaeze and a gathering of Black youths representing schools and organizations from throughout the region that in racing “you lose more than you win.”
“You have to learn how to deal with that.”
Wallace has won an event on the track he will compete on this weekend. He triumphed in the 2014 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race.
He said he didn’t have a favorite driver he followed as a youth, adding that he now “looks up to Lewis Hamilton, the champion Formula 1 racer.”
“His performance is very empowering,” Wallace said.
And he also said with a smile that he speaks with Jordan “about once a week.”
