Kansas City, Kan. ? Saturday’s race had ended about an hour ago when it occurred to me as I was hanging out in the Kansas Speedway campgrounds, outside the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 winner’s motor coach, that when all the grinding grows silent, the sport is all about families. It either runs in them or it doesn’t.

This race day started the way it always does for winner Scott Dixon of New Zealand and his family. Instead of Frosted Flakes with skim milk, the usual breakfast fare, Dixon’s wife, the glamorous Emma Davies-Dixon, cooked pancakes.

“It’s a tradition,” said Dixon’s motor coach driver, Dennis “Wadd” Weaks, aka The Mayor of the Campgrounds. “It’s an English-type pancake, not like we’re used to in America. It’s a flat-type pancake. She makes a pancake, makes an egg and puts it on there, then three pieces of bacon and wraps it up, almost like a burrito.”

Emma, who in July gave birth to the couple’s first child, a baby girl named Poppy, married into racing. Scott was born into it.

“I raced, and so did my wife,” Dixon’s father, Ron, said while standing outside the coach after the victory. “I suppose he didn’t have a choice. He watched us work on the race cars when he was a baby. Then he was 6 years, going on 7, we put him in a go-kart. He was a natural.”

Scott’s higher ceiling was so obvious to Ron that he retired from racing earlier than he figured to help his son.

“I could see he was going to be at the top,” Ron said. “He’s miles better than I am.”

What makes him better?

“It’s a combination of things,” Ron said. “His reaction, his demeanor. I was a hothead. He’s very calm in everything he does. It’s hard to define exactly what it is. I think he learned a lot in go-karts. Get in a pattern and cruise.”

After his 22nd Indy Car Series victory, Dixon held up Poppy in Victory Lane. Maybe Poppy will become the Danica Patrick of her generation because this is a sport that really does run in families, even families from Lawrence.

Low-key Lawrence Sinks of Lawrence and his high-key son Larry, former proprietor of defunct Joe College, share a passion for racing.

Weaks told the story of how he met them. Larry had arranged a sponsor for the 2000 Indianapolis 500 for a car owned by Tony Stewart and driven by Jeret Schroeder. Larry asked that his father be allowed to work the entire month of May on the team as a volunteer. Weaks was against it, figuring you get what you pay for, so he tested the volunteer’s mettle by giving him every grunt job imaginable. The older Sinks passed every test and then some. Shortly before qualifying, Schroeder’s engine blew. Weaks borrowed a spare engine from his old pal A.J. Foyt, and Lawrence helped to screw it into place.

Lawrence has been to every Indy 500 save one (1981) since 1959. Larry boasts a perfect attendance record since 1974, when Pancho Carter earned Rookie of the Year honors. The same Pancho limped across the campgrounds Saturday to join the Sliver Bullet celebration outside Dixon’s motor coach, the gait courtesy of a wreck at Indy.

“Broke both my arms,” Carter said. “You find out who your friends really are when you’ve got two broken arms and have to go to the bathroom.”