Things People Do : GO-GETTERS : These Drivers Love to Put the Kart Before the Horsepower

It’s a Sunday afternoon, and the pits are packed at the Amago Raceway on the La Jolla Indian Reservation north of Ramona. Mechanics are working feverishly to fine-tune their vehicles, and a couple of drivers argue over whether one got an unfair advantage when he didn’t use a piece of required equipment.

Lea Gale, 15, gets her final instructions and shoots out onto the track.

Minutes later, Keith Johnson--all 57 years of him--pulls off the course after his qualifying run.

Although the age, occupation and competitive desire vary, the wheels these drivers sit behind are the same--they steer go-karts. Not the bumper cars that cost a couple of tickets at an amusement park; they can hit 50-60 miles per hour in the straightaways.

“The sensation you get with your butt an inch off the ground is just awesome,” said Johnson, a retired fireman from Denver. “I’m the old man in the group, but they don’t cut me any slack.”

When the 120-member San Diego Kart Club gets together, machinery becomes the great equalizer.

Spending time at the track was nothing new for Gale, a freshman at Granite Hills High School, and it seemed only natural she would end up driving.

“Ever since I can remember, I’ve gone to sprint car races,” Gale said. “I always wanted to be a race car driver. I want to race everything.”

Johnson was never into racing, either as a spectator or participant. He just happened to be winding his way up Highway 94 to Jamul when he ran into the sport.

“I used to see these little kids racing out there, and they looked like they were having a ball,” Johnson said. “One day, I pulled over and got out and watched. When they were finished they took off their helmets, and they had gray beards.”

Although go karts look like they’d be fun to take for a spin, some people take driving these 60-inch long, 145-pound vehicles seriously. Sometimes just a little too seriously for Doug Fleming, president of the San Diego Kart Club.

“Three years ago there were no kids (in the club),” said Fleming, who operates a business that builds go-kart engines. “Everybody was getting so serious, they were forgetting what we were here for. Now we’re getting more and more kids. It’s really a cheap sport if you do it right.”

Larry Gale is one of those who does. Gale spent around $1,000 each on karts for his two daughters. Johnson, who bought his kart off the shelf, spent about $2,000.

“For under a grand, you can get started,” Gale said. “It doesn’t really cost anything after the initial investment.”

Gale is like a lot of fathers in the San Diego Kart Club. He started out racing and then found himself spending less time on the track and more working on his kids’ karts.

“I gave up driving because of the kids,” Gale said. “It’s too much time.”

Larry Robinson agreed as he stood and flagged the youngest racers onto to the course. “You have to keep them running right,” said Robinson, who has two sons that race.

The minimum age to race is 8. The karts use a five-horsepower engine that is similar to that used for a lawn mower, and although kids can get into the 30-40 m.p.h. range, this is considered the safest wheel racing sport in the world.

At the recent Grandnationals at Laguna Seca, 684 drivers competed for five days, eight hours a day, and there were just three injuries--two cracked ribs and a broken collarbone.

Although Fleming knows that the future of the sport is in the young, there are serious drivers who have found that the sport can be a way to something else.

Walt Meyers has spent most of his life around go-karts. He operates a business that builds karts and engines in Poway and on a recent day at his shop, he was on the phone answering questions from a buyer in Puerto Rico. He has also shipped his karts to Canada.

Meyers won the go-kart grand nationals in 1967, which is how he got started building engines.

“I was just a nobody, and then instantly everybody wanted me to build them engines,” Meyers said. “You can’t buy enough horsepower to make up for poor driving, so I’d teach them to drive, they’d win and then buy another engine.”

Meyers has been in Poway 12 years. Past and present Meyers clients include Al Unser Jr., Lance Mears (nephew of Rick and Roger Mears), Scott Pruett, who finished 10th in the 1989 Indianapolis 500 as a rookie and Indy driver Kevin Cogan.

“I was talking to (professional racing driver) Frank Arciero recently, and he said he’s been racing for 30 years, and now all the Indy guys are coming out of karting,” Meyers said. “I had a customer come by and tell me that he called up one of these driving schools that teach people how to drive competitively, and the first thing they asked is if he had any karting experience.

“You can wreck a lot of automobiles learning how to drive. It’s a piece of cake for a go-kart driver to drive cars.”

Although Meyers has clients who are serious about becoming professional drivers, the majority of his customers are those who just want to race karts for the fun of it.

And this is the clientele that Meyers is banking on. Literally.

There are only three tracks where go-karts are being raced in San Diego County: Carlsbad Raceway, Kartsville in Jamul and the Amago Raceway. Carlsbad is a dirt track, which is not popular with a lot of drivers, and the raceway has been sold and may be developed. Kartsville is surrounded by a growing residential area of Jamul and runs right along Highway 94, which may be eventually expanded from two to four lanes.

That, Meyers hopes, will leave Amago as the primary track for go-kart enthusiasts.

The half-mile asphalt track with 12 turns is a year old. Meyers and John Amago, who owns the land on the La Jolla Reservation off of Highway 76, teamed up to build what amounts to a go-kart park.

But the men’s dreams have been slowed by fiscal reality.

“So far we’ve used small loans I would guarantee myself,” Meyers said. “We thought we could do it for $25,000. We’ve spent $100,000, and we don’t even have a building.”

Although Meyers and Amago have the most important part--the track--they are hoping to break ground on kart storage units and a rental facility. Meyers figures more people would get into the sport if they could store their vehicles at the track instead of having to tow them. And there are no rental facilities in the county, so people must either use a friend’s cart or buy one.

Meyers also plans to eventually move his shop to the track and open a kart driving school.

“I really believe this is what people need,” Meyers said. “My intention is to help the tribe as we grow. It’s a small mom-and-pop organization now.

“It’s always been my dream to have to have a place where people can go to race karts.”

Meyers may find that his dreams are not much different from those who zip around his kart track.

“It’s truly a Walter Mitty sport,” Johnson said. “This is as close to those $250,000 cars most of us will ever get.”