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Sunday, May 04, 2003

By John Raby, The Associated Press

FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- Josh Starcher stares down the chassis of a 6,000-horsepower top fuel dragster, gives the thumbs up, and prepares for another quarter-mile ride at speeds of more than 300 mph.

There's no time to think about anything else -- such as missing the prom.

As his East Fairmont High School classmates prepared for their dance, Starcher was at Bristol, Tenn., in his second National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel event.

"I'd miss a prom every weekend to go racing," said Starcher, 18.

Especially against the sport's best.

Starcher is the latest teenager to hit the NHRA circuit, following the likes of Cristen Powell and Australia's Andrew Cowin in Top Fuel dragsters, and sisters Erica and Courtney Enders in other classes.

His debut came 15 months after he completed a driving school for Top Fuel dragsters and got an immediate offer to go behind the wheel for Charlotte, N.C.-based Colhart Motorsports.

Starcher wouldn't have gotten this far if not for NHRA's Jr. Drag Racing League, where he got started at age 11.

NHRA opened up drag racing and other model cars to younger drivers in 1992.

The JDRL started to develop not only the interest among young drivers, but live skills, because they race on the same track as the professionals and go through the same mechanical motions, only at slower speeds.

The half-scale dragsters are powered by five-horsepower engines that produce speeds up to 85 mph on a one-eighth-mile track. Young drivers move into other classes and higher speeds as they get older.

The league has more than 4,000 participants from ages 8 to 17.

"They're probably better drivers than we are," said Top Fuel veteran "Big Daddy" Don Garlits.

Safety is at the forefront, and despite the risk of something going wrong at high speeds, part of the learning process for youngsters is overcoming fear.

"I've raised my kids with a little bit of a different mentality about faith and fear," said Gregg Enders, father of Courtney and Erica, the subjects of the recent Disney movie "Right on Track."

"Faith is imagining what you'd like to have happen and fear is imagining what you don't want to have happen," he said. "It all just depends on which camp you live in, whether you live your life afraid to ever leave your couch, or if you go out and just live life really full."

Erica Enders, 19, has been racing for 10 years. When she's not attending classes at Texas A&M as a freshman, she races in the NHRA's Super Comp and Super Gas classes, designed for speeds under 200 mph.

Erica Enders will move up to the 250-mph A-Fuel class next year, then hopefully to Top Fuel.

"I feel much, much safer putting my teenage girls in a race car with a fire suit, a helmet, roll cage and all the safety provisions," Gregg Enders said. "I feel much better about putting them in that situation than I do than when I let them go on a date."

Most teens make the transition from junior dragsters to other models before getting into a Top Fuel dragster. Starcher's transition is rare.

Most drivers can't afford the jump -- it costs at least $500,000 to put together a Top Fuel dragster.

"Then you better have some more parts," Garlits said.

That's where sponsors come in. Starcher's lack of a main sponsor has kept his racing team's budget tight and limited his race schedule.

"Starcher has kind of leapfrogged several levels. We chose not to do that," Gregg Enders said. "I don't think it's wrong. I just think it's like putting a 14-year-old kid on the PGA Tour. They may be able to shoot the number, but they're really not ready."

Kenny Bernstein, who retired from the cockpit at the end of last season, said sponsors want young adults in their cars, but he believes an 18-year-old's participation in Top Fuel is pushing the limits.

"Experience, knowledge and how many runs you make down the race track in any type of race car is important. Certainly, at 18 you probably don't have a lot of those," he said.

At age 17 last year, Starcher raced in eight of 12 IHRA events, finishing in the top five in the final points standings.

In his first NHRA qualifier last month in Gainesville, Fla., Starcher went against Garlits, driving the quarter-mile in a personal best 4.75 seconds at 305 mph. He didn't make the qualifying field of 16, which ended up as one of the fastest in top fuel dragster history.

Last Sunday at Bristol, Starcher ran 4.72 seconds at 306 mph to qualify for the finals, but finished last.

It didn't matter. Starcher has plenty of time to get it right.

"When I was 18, I was just driving regular cars at the tracks. There weren't any dragsters," Garlits said. "He's got a head start on all of that."

Starcher's only fear, it appears, is the unknown.

"And if you want to know the truth, the unknown is every single pass," he said. "In that car, you know what it's supposed to do, but that doesn't mean that that's what it's going to do. You can go out there at half track and completely demolish the engine and you'll be scooting around in your own oil on fire. I've done that before.

"It's not fun."

All this used to scare Vicki Marra, Starcher's girlfriend who is one of the state's top 100- and 200-meter sprinters. The first time she saw Starcher race last year in Norwalk, Ohio, she thought he was crazy.

"Now, I love it," she said.

She'd forgiven Starcher for missing the prom. If Marra wasn't on the homecoming court, she would've skipped it as well to see him race.

"I'd take a track meet over a dance any day, so I can see where he's coming from," she said.