Your hands are sweating. You're buckled in by a five-point harness. You're gripping the wheel tight, ready to take part in ten laps of white-knuckle racing.
Then, your dad comes up behind you and pull starts the engine on your go-kart.
This is the scene at the beginning of every Friday night at Skyline Speedway in Stewart, Ohio. The 3/8 of a mile track of dark, red clay also plays host to drivers of late models, modifieds, pure stocks and four cylinders in addition to the go-kart type of racing performed by some of the area's younger drivers in the mini-wedge division.
With NASCAR growing in popularity across the globe, it makes sense that the effects would trickle down to local dirt tracks around the country.
Brent Steele of Athens, owner and promoter of Skyline Speedway, knows the dirt track lifestyle firsthand.
My dad used to take me
when I was a little kid to this place Steele said. I spent a lot of nights falling asleep on the bleachers.
Steele, however, isn't sure if interest in dirt track racing has been affected by the expansion of NASCAR into the mainstream.
I don't know if NASCAR really helps the dirt tracks. The dirt track people are a different bunch. They still enjoy NASCAR but there's a lot of difference between the two. But you always have some people that decide they'll come and watch the race and then they want to race
Steele said.
Dani Saetts of Vienna, W. Va., whose father has been in racing for 37 years and is the lead scoring official at Skyline, has been selling racing newspapers for the past two years at the track and thinks the recent influx of NASCAR popularity may play a role in the track's attendance.
It probably has an effect. You see some younger kids out here. I think you see it when people come out mainly to see late models
because that's growing a lot
Saetts said.
Doug Dodd of Cambridge, Ohio has been driving on dirt tracks for the past 19 years and feels that, over recent years, the differences at the track are obvious.
You see more and more younger guys getting into it all the time
Dodd said. There's 13
14 or 15-year-old people starting in it
especially in the lower classes. That's cool because it's not easy
this dirt track stuff. It's pretty expensive. It'll probably cost $20
000 to $30
