Ever since Rajah Caruth was a little boy, he always wanted to be a race car driver. This weekend, he’ll take another step in his quest to fulfill that destiny.
Caruth, 16, a junior at Schools Without Walls, is one of eight young drivers invited to compete for a slot in the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Development Program, which grooms girls and young drivers of color for NASCAR’s professional racing series.
But to get in the program, Caruth has to race against his competition this weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina during NASCAR’s 2019 Drive for Diversity Youth Driver Combine—a motorized go-cart competition. The competition runs Saturday and Sunday and the top four finishers get into the program.
“I’m pretty pumped, honestly,” Caruth told DCist ahead of the competition. “Even if I don’t get picked, it’s an honor I got chosen to not only be there, but to represent D.C. and my family.”
Caruth fell in love with racing when he was four or five years old after watching the cartoon movie Cars. Beyond the cute vehicles, he was intrigued by the way drivers interacted, their lives off the track, and the dangers of racing.
Caruth was in the audience for his first NASCAR race in 2014 (held in Richmond) and sat so close to the fence that he could feel the heat and vibrations coming off the track. That prompted him to pursue professional race car driving. “It was everything I dreamed of and more, honestly,” he says.
NASCAR is one of America’s largest sports, but women and people of color are still vastly underrepresented as drivers and on pit crews, says Christy Gormal, chief marketing officer of Rev Racing, the competition arm of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity Program. Three of the program’s graduates are racing in the cup series now—one driver is African American, one is Asian American, and one is Latin American; all three are males.
Students were selected for the competition based on their skills, abilities and potential to be developed into a NASCAR driver. The drivers who make it into the program also become year-long members of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity team, and compete in the Bojangles’ Summer Shootout in Charlotte and other events with Rev Racing. Rev Racing promotes and trains drivers of color and girls to compete in INEX Legend Cars.
“We are very enthused with the level of talent that we are seeing in our youth applicants,”Max Siegel, owner of Rev Racing, said in a statement. “The talent pool continues to grow and connecting with these rising stars as early as possible is key. If we have the ability to engage drivers and their families early in their careers, we can prepare, train and nurture their talents through every step of our program and beyond.”
Caruth has been on NASCAR’s radar for a while.
In just nine months, the Trinidad NE resident notched more than 20 iRacing wins and 157 top fives in 359 starts. iRacing is an online racing simulator mirrored after actual NASCAR, Formula One, and other professional competitions.
“He has had a lot of success with his iRacing career and that is something that NASCAR is looking at,” Gormal says. “He started this and he’s already very, very successful in such a short amount of time.”
Caruth started racing electric go-carts at 15. A year later, he embarked on his iRacing career, which he is also using to train for this weekend’s competition. Beyond that, he watched GoPro footage of people racing at the track in Charlotte, which he said helped him memorize the track entirely.
When he competes this and leaves it all on the track this weekend, he’ll turn to remember a piece of advice he learned from his favorite racer, Darrell “Bubba” Wallace Jr., who is also African American.
“He just said to back up the corners,” Caruth says. “That just meant to get off the gas earlier, so that could help as you exit out of the corner, and just to be smooth and try to avoid as much incidents as possible.”
