At an age when most children can only dream about getting a license to drive the family minivan, Chase Austin speeds up to 70 miles per hour each weekend.

He’s got another head start, too: He can already drive a stick shift.

Chase Austin poses with his mini-sprint car.

Parked in a barn which has been converted to a garage, Chase’s two mini-sprint cars about the size of the golf cart he drives to school sit poised for action. As Chase’s dad, Steve, starts the engine, which runs on alcohol (not the kind you can drink, as Chase’s mom, Marianne, and sister Jessica clarify), a distinct smell emanates from the machine.

For Marianne, it’s the smell of summer.

The Eudora West Elementary School sixth-grader races mini-sprint cars almost every weekend, nearly year round. The kids at West take notice, Steve said, because Chase left school early nearly every Friday to compete in the nearest races, which take the family to Tulsa, Okla., Oklahoma City and Sweet Springs, Mo.

Even though Chase downplayed his racing and preferred to play basketball when friends come over, Steve said Chase’s peers got a close-up look at what he does at last Thursday’s career fair.

“They couldn’t picture what car it was until we pulled up with the big rig,” Steve said.

Chase’s two cars represent two different classes of mini-sprints, one of which goes about 55 mph and the other about 70. Depending on which car he’s racing, Chase competes against teenagers from 12 to 14 or adults.

“You have to feel stupid if you’re an adult racing against little kids,” Marianne said.

Especially if you’re racing against Chase, who has a basement wall full of trophies two or three deep, so many that even he’s not sure of the count.

“I lost it at 72,” Chase said, grinning.

Although Chase focuses now on mini-sprints, which he’s raced about a year, he made his start with go-karts at age 9. He still races the smaller vehicles three or four times a year in competitions that provided many of his trophies.

Chase started with go-karts when racing the vehicles was a family event.

“I put blocks on the brakes and gas pedals,” Steve said.

In mini-sprint racing, Chase usually earns money, plaques and winner’s stickers for his car rather than trophies, and the Austins are finding the competition in mini-sprints different.

“In go-karts we would clean sweep everything,” Marianne said. “We’re still a little new at this. We don’t win everything we go to. That takes some getting used to.”

At a prestigious race in Tulsa, Chase’s stamina was put to the test when he came from behind twice to place third in the go-kart race while also placing ninth in a mini-sprint.

“It’s a race people don’t let their kids run because it’s dangerous and aggressive,” Steve said, describing the track.

In the go-kart competition, Chase had to start in the back of the pack.

“I drew the worst you could,” he said.

Even though he placed in that race, he was a half-pound too light and had to run a B class race to progress. In the B race, he started 14th and finished second, but a lap car was mistakenly counted, and the family had to raise a ruckus to make sure Chase got counted. In the end, it was a sweet victory.

“You just don’t come from behind like that and win,” Marianne said.

Jessica recalled how she and the family’s middle child, Cara, were up in arms over the injustice of the B race.

Marianne said their daughters, whose dance team and cheerleading awards compose the rest of the basement trophies, take on the roll of cheerleaders and pit crew. Cara, Marianne said, especially enjoyed the mechanical aspect.

Although Jessica takes interest in her brother’s sport, she said she had no interest in racing. Her proud automotive accomplishment, she said beaming while pointing to the driveway, was washing her car.

Some families might fracture from the stress of cultivating a child’s talents, but the Austins said traveling and racing brought them together. Standing in the driveway surrounding one of Chase’s mini-sprints, they recalled humorous anecdotes from road trips. They recalled Chase laughing about how he learned to take a shower in an RV moving down the Interstate, or Steve teasing Marianne and Jessica about how he always had to drive, or Jessica and Chase groaning over the family’s first trailer.

But sometimes the anecdotes aren’t humorous. The Austins said they sometimes drew attention at times negative in a sport dominated by white drivers. Because Chase is a bi-racial racer, however, he’s also drawn positive attention from reporters, who have featured him in The Journal-World, The Kansas City Star and NASCAR publications.

His background, coupled with his talent, Marianne said, made Chase unique in the racing world, and she hopes more sponsors will take notice.