At last month's race in Bristol, Tenn., about 700 kids, ages 8 to 17, showed up to compete in eight bracket classes on the eighth-mile. The classes were divided by age, and one class had 57 participants in the first round. Starting on a Friday, rain delays postponed the finals till 10:30 Saturday night, but those kids hung in there all the way.  Some of the 17-year-old "veterans" still remember 1994, when the first Jr. Drag Racing League (JDRL) National Championships were at Indianapolis Raceway Park; racing didn't finish until 1:30 or 2 a.m.  Some kids were asleep in their cars in the lanes.

If you still think this is small potatoes, munch on this: since that first national championship, many of those pioneering participants have recently come of age within the JDRL program and have moved directly into profession drag racing - Pro Stock's Richie Stevens is probably the most prominent, followed by Mick Snyder in Top Alcohol Funny Car, A.J. Foyt IV, who has followed his grandfather into open wheel competition, and of course Pro Stock racer Erica Enders, whose loosely based Disney Channel biopic, "Right On Track", really helped put the JDRL on the map.

It all boils down to this: these kids are the future of drag racing. If you look at the sport objectively, you'll see there are some cold, hard facts to face. While stock car racing has increasingly dominated the motorsports world, the relationship between what is found on the street and what is racing at the strip has slowly eroded away as technology and tastes have changed. Kids watching drag racing today can't relate to a '69 Camaro, let alone a Funny Car or a Top Fuel dragster. Interest in things mechanical has waned in the Age of Information; a PC is far more interesting to a teen than a CID.

To help combat this situation, the NHRA has instituted two programs, the Jr.Drag Racing League and the Sport Compact Series. The latter caters to the latest high-tech, high-performance street machines: Hondas, Toyotas, Nissans, Mitsubishis - cars the X and Y generations have adopted as their own. The JDRL has longer range goals: involving children in the sport of drag racing, seeking to make it as ingrained in their lives as baseball, softball, football and soccer is now; if not creating future racers, at least ensuring future spectators. Meanwhile, the JDRL program already has yielded some interesting results: over more than 25 percent of Junior Dragster drivers are female, and sometimes the rate is even higher at individual meets; within the pro ranks, that one quarter is currently represented by Erica Enders.

"The Juniors are a great introduction to the sport," Enders said. Perhaps even more so for girls than for boys. "Racing in the Junior class has not only taught me how to drag race, with staging and reacting to the tree and all, but it also taught me how to deal with some of the mind games people play when you race them. I also got used to talking to the media a little and also got good at answering what it's like to be a girl racer . . . a question that I still get asked during almost every interview. I am definitely glad I raced a Junior [Dragster] and I think the experience helps me a lot even now in Pro Stock."

After winning her first Wally at age 9, Enders attended Frank Hawley's Drag School at 16, raced Super Comp and Super Gas, then hooked up with Cagnazzi Racing, which recently announced that her yellow Chevy Cobalt is to be sponsored by Slammers, flavored milk beverages made by Bravo! Foods.

Junior drag racing began simply enough. Back in 1991, the late Vince Napp, owner and operator of Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J., decided to extend his passion for drag racing to his kids by building his son David a half-scale dragster powered by a 5-horse Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engine. Seeing how much his son liked racing it, Napp took his invention to the NHRA, which in a bit of serendipity was at that time thinking about publishing a youth-oriented magazine to better connect with this
market.

That publication turned out to be Jr. DRAGSTER, which premiered the same year as the JDRL, 1993. Today there are more than 5,000 members racing at more than 130 participating tracks. When one centralized championship race proved to be too taxing for the kids, it was divided into two finals, the aforementioned Eastern Conference, and the Western Conference, conducted later the same month at Bandimere Raceway in Denver, Colo. The prize: more than $1 million in scholarships since 1994.

Like David Napp, nearly all Jr. Dragsters are children of drag racers or someone involved in the industry. The JDRL succeeds in getting kids involved at a younger age, ensuring that racing is more of a family endeavor, and teaching them some basic skills. Richie Stevens got involved at age 13 in 1993, the first year the league was set up. His father, Richard Sr., had started doing some sportsman racing when Richie was about 10. His son's interest in the sport was immediate and intense.

"I wanted to race," Stevens said. "I liked going to the track, being around the cars, so when they introduced the (JDRL), it came at just the right time. My dad went ahead and surprised me and got me a car, and that's where it all started."

Stevens ran the JDRL for about two and half years before he physically outgrew the car. With his dad's support, he continued his education by first attending Frank Hawley's school, then Roy Hill's, the latter teaching him how to race with a clutch. Again in the right place at the right time, he joined Hill's Pro Stock team after a driver dropped out. Today he races with Don Schumaker's team, piloting a Dodge Stratus sponsored primarily by Mopar and Valspar.

"(Junior drag racing) taught me a lot about sportsmanship and just racing other people," Stevens said. "I learned how to deal with winning, deal with losing. Being around people my age, younger people, older people - it was a good deal. And since I did (Junior Drag Racing), it's come a long way. They definitely brought it up to another level."

Case in point: Stevens attended the first national championship in Indianapolis, where the then-13 year old went out in the first round after losing to an 8-year-old girl. Although this might be an extreme example of disproportionate skill level, the JDRL is now broken up by age classes (8-9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16-17), with drivers age 8-9 running as fast s 12.90 seconds (about 45 mph) on the eighth-mile, 10-12-year-olds running up to 8.90, and 13-17-year-olds limited to 7.90 seconds at 85 mph.

Advancements in technology have taken place, too. In the early days, the engines were pull-started, just like lawn mowers. Today's junior dragsters use Top Fuel-style starters on cast aluminum or billet blocks sporting data loggers. Some racers even have sophisticated chassis set-ups. But this all has a downside: money. While a basic half-scale dragster costs about $4,000, a high-end version can cost in excess of $15,000. Throw in gear and safety equipment, another $300. This subsequently has lead to another learning experience in drag racing: getting sponsorships. Naturally at the Junior Dragster level these are even harder to find, but in some cases Dad's directly footing the bill or the expense of the car has been tacked on to his own program. Once conceived as something you could throw in the back of a pickup truck, junior dragsters are now being loaded into full race trailers.

One such proud papa is Ron Capps, driver of the Brut-sponsored Dodge Stratus Funny Car. His 8-year-old daughter Taylor recently entered the JDRL, with revealing results.

"I think the program is awesome," Capps said. "It was unbelievable how open and helpful everyone was to anyone wanting to get their kid into a Junior Dragster. (And) I think that it teaches the kids the right mindset when it comes to sportsmanship . . . the race that we were at was the last race of the year and there was a championship at stake. There were some technical problems with the track as far as the timing system, and the race director got everyone together and said that they didn't feel it was fair to everyone with the tech problems, so they were going to just run the race that day for fun and no points would be awarded . . . and there wasn't one complaint from any parents OR kids. I'm not so sure you would see the same results at a Little League game, you know? The safety of the cars was awesome as well - Taylor had a top-end mishap, hitting a wall at a pretty good clip, and the Junior Dragster did more than it's its job, as far as the safety."

Despite the costs, the sport of junior drag racing is growing.