On the Fast Track: 14-Year-Old Driving A Dream

He can’t legally drive a car in South Carolina, but that doesn’t stop him for tearing up the tracks across the south.

Fourteen-year-old Kyle Benjamin dreams of one day racing on the NASCAR circuit, it’s something he thinks about every day.

Sliding in the window of his No. 71 racecar and settling himself in the driver’s seat, he secures the steering wheel. He flips on the switches and the dash lights up.

But it’s Benjamin’s face that glows. He is in his element as he describes how the equipment works on race day.

Earlier this month, he ran in Speedweek’s World Series of Asphalt in New Smyrna, Fla., which normally means nine races in a nine-day period. But rain at the track allowed time for only six of the races to be run, three of which Benjamin won.

“We really just ran to get seat time,” Benjamin said. “The more you race, the better you get.”

The race had been run for the past 46 years, but Benjamin is now the youngest champion.

He will leave this week to compete at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla.

An eighth-grade student at in Easley, Benjamin knows that if he wants to keep racing, he has to keep his grades up.

An A-B honor roll student, Benjamin is excused from class to attend races, but the deal with Principal Mike Cory includes keeping up with his schoolwork. That means extra hours at school, more homework on some days than others and finding time to work in some weightlifting to prepare for the race. He says he doesn’t have much time for other things, but that’s OK with him.

“I don’t have the football and baseball talent,” he said.

“And he really has no interest in it,” his dad, Steve, adds. “But his schoolwork has to come first.”

Benjamin has always wanted to race. It’s an obsession that many of his friends don’t understand.

“I have a couple of friends who race dirt bikes and they say that is harder,” Benjamin said. “They think I just turn left out there. It’s a lot harder than it looks.”

At the age of 5, Benjamin began a short-lived career in go-carts. By the time he turned six, he was tearing up tracks racing quarter midgets. The cars were safer and put Benjamin on the right track to move up to the Bandalero series, where he would become the youngest to win the series at the age of 8.

He would then make the national progression to the Pro Challenge series before transitioning at age 12 to Late Models and Super Late Models.

But it’s a career that hasn’t come without scrutiny.

Benjamin finds himself on the track with older drivers, most at least twice his age. While some respect his driving skills, despite his age, he said there are still some who are out there who “don’t want to get beat by the kid.”

Up until last year, Benjamin was the youngest on the circuit. A 13-year-old now races in the same field.

Benjamin spends about two weekends of the month at the track for big races during the spring, but it’s not until the summer when the season really cranks up and he’s running just about every weekend.

Benjamin runs two different types of cars, a super late model, which features a 600-horsepower-engine and pro late model with a 400-horsepower-engine.

“The super late is just a lot faster,” Benjamin said. “They look pretty much the same, just drive differently.”

Benjamin said on a larger track they run about 115 mph, reducing the speed to 103 in the turns.

It’s the same field of cars that Kyle Busch and Jimmy Johnson run, when not racing in the Sprint Cup or Nationwide series.

Busch is Benjamin’s favorite driver. He likes the way he drives.

“He knows how to wheel his car to drive it hard, to pull away from the field,” Benjamin said.

It’s from watching other drivers that Benjamin said he has learned the most.

“Someone isn’t in there telling you how to drive the car,” Benjamin said. “You have to figure that part of it out on your own.”

Benjamin said that he had to learn to over drive his car, to save his tires and to pick the right spots to gain an advantage on the track.

“At the beginning of a race you have to save your tires, that becomes just as important at the end of the race, their hotter, there’s less rubber, there’s more of a chance to mess up.”

Benjamin said he remembers sitting behind the wheel for the first time and thinking the car was so big. He said once he found his comfort zone, he didn’t feel so small in it anymore.

On race day, Steve Benjamin straps his son in, before he takes his position as a spotter on the track. He said it gives him peace-of-mind, knowing that everything is fastened in place correctly and that Kyle is safe and secure for the ride.

Steve said once the race begins he has a job to do. He’s watching for wrecks, telling him about debris on the track and even at times, giving advice on driving.

“I think he tunes me out a lot,” Steve Benjamin laughs.

“Dad talks too much sometimes,” Kyle Benjamin counters. “I have to push the button to turn him off sometimes or mute him, especially when he starts telling me how to drive.”

But Steve Benjamin said his son doesn’t panic behind the wheel, he’s calm, he drives through problems and has walked away from some pretty bad wrecks with only scrapes and bruises.

That’s including one just a few weeks ago in Alabama when Benjamin struck a wall, barrel-rolled and was suspended upside down by his seat harness.

“There was oil everywhere,” Kyle Benjamin said. “I burned my hand, but other than that, I was able to unfasten my harness and crawl out.”

Steve Benjamin and three full-time employees are responsible for cleaning, repairing and maintaining the car and all the equipment. Steve's dad, Roger Benjamin, is the team's only sponsor. Everyone has a job on race day to help get the No. 71 car to the front of the pack and keep it there.

It’s the crew that can make or break a driver at the track. And it’s the crew chief Freddie Query that makes sure that Benjamin’s car is ready to go.

“We can usually unload, make a few minor adjustments and hit the track, he’s so good at it,” Benjamin said. “But I can tell him my car's doing this and he knows what to do to correct it.”

Steve Benjamin said he hopes his son’s work ethic and his experience will catch the eye of a sponsor. He hopes next year to move up to the ARCA series.

“We do this for one reason only, because he loves it,” said Steve Benjamin. “It’s not a hobby, it’s a lifestyle. People ask me all the time is this my dream, or is this his dream? It’s his dream, if it were mine we wouldn’t be doing it.”

Steve Benjamin said people in Easley don’t realize what a huge fan base his son has or even what it is that they do. He said it’s only in places like Pensacola, Florida, and Montgomery, Alabama, that Kyle Benjamin draws a large crowd, that at times waits more than an hour to meet him.

“He doesn’t talk about it at school, his friends don’t really know what he does because they haven’t seen him do it,” Steve Benjamin said.

Kyle Benjamin said he’d rather be at a racetrack than anywhere else. He loves the sound, the smell, the activity and the time behind the wheel.

While he dreams of NASCAR, he also wishes he was old enough for a license.

But he said it’s a privilege he realizes his parents will monitor closely, especially after speeding around a racetrack.

“Mom (Tiffany) and dad have already told me I can’t drive after a race,” Benjamin said. “That’s going to be the hardest part about driving out on the road is remembering there’s a speed limit.”

Check out Kyle Benjamin's schedule and his finishes on the track.