Back on track
Despite their injuries, there's no slowing these kids' love of racing
BRAINTREE - At first glance, 8-year-old David Eustace and 9-year-old Jonathan Schores look like the other children suiting up for a day at the races at the F1 Boston go-cart track. Both, however, walk with a slight limp. At first glance, their carts look like the other junior hot rods. Both, however, have brake pedals on the right side, not the usual left, and throttles mounted on the steering wheels.
Watch the boys race - David with a prosthetic left leg, and Jonathan with a left leg once so badly broken it took three years and multiple operations before he could walk without a brace - and nothing differentiates them from their able-bodied rivals. The only thing that matters here is the skill and nerve and competitive edge to circle the track 15 times as fast as they can.
David and Jonathan were critically injured on Oct. 1, 2004, when a 65-year-old driver lost control of his car and plowed into a crowd of children and adults outside their elementary school in Stoneham. That the boys are here at all, much less exuberantly racing go-carts, is a miracle to their families. Jonathan faces additional surgery this month, after which he won't be back racing until the summer season. David, whose left leg was amputated above the knee, also wears a brace on his other leg because his ankle no longer functions.
"This is his big thing," says Paul Eustace, 47, watching David race one recent Sunday morning. "This is what keeps him happy. It's the only time he gets to race on an even playing field."
That the boys can achieve in racing what they can no longer accomplish in most other sports is due to the efforts and empathy of an F1 general manager suffering brain tumors that robbed her of her own ability to walk unaided.
The boys come to this playing field because Jonathan's father, Mark Schores, a 48-year-old sales engineer who came to F1 on a corporate outing, asked F1 general manager Karen Quast if there was any way his injured son could join a junior league once he turned 7, the program's minimum age. "I said, 'We can make it happen. I wear a brace every day,' " Quast, 42, recalls.
The specially adapted, waist-to-ankle brace outfitted with elastic bands that Quast wears allows her a gait so close to normal that Schores didn't notice that she is disabled. She hasn't been able to walk on her own since her first brain surgery in 2002 left her unable to signal her hip flexor to move. She used a wheelchair for a year and a half before she got her brace, and she still uses one when she takes off her brace in the evening. Determined to continue racing go-carts, as she'd done since the mid-1990s, Quast turned to F1 mechanics for help just as Schores was now turning to her.
"I said, 'Guys, you've got to get me into a cart,' " she recalls. So they tinkered and came up with a hand-operated racer. F1 now has rigged four adult-size carts with hand controls to accommodate wheelchair-bound or otherwise disabled clients. "We've had people in the grandstands in a wheelchair," Quast says, "and my staff will say, 'Are you racing today?' "
Timothy Ripley, a 45-year-old computer programmer from New Jersey who's been paraplegic since a motorcycle accident 21 years ago, tried an F1 go-cart in June and bought one in July. "I did a little bit of road racing on motorcycles," he says. "I hadn't felt that speed kick in a long time."
When Schores approached Quast, his son was in a locked, full-leg brace but could use his other foot, so F1 mechanics moved the brake pedal and installed the hand-controlled throttle. Schores told the Eustaces about F1, and mechanics retrofitted another cart for David. The boys race in different leagues - Jonathan in a larger 5 1/2-horsepower cart that can reach speeds of 35 miles per hour on quarter-mile tracks lined with walls of tires, and David in a smaller 4-horsepower one that can hit 30 mph.
"It scares us sometimes," Paul Eustace confesses.
"But it doesn't scare me," says David. "I like that they go fast."
Their jumpsuits zipped up, helmets on, neck cushions in place, the boys, in their respective races, slide into their low-slung carts. The drivers all race three times, once in the front of the pack, once in the middle and once in the back. After practice laps to warm their tires enough to grip the track, they're off. They tail as close as they can without bumping. They aim for the inside edge to protect their position from the car behind, and look for the opportunity to pass afforded by the mistakes of the driver ahead. Unlike the other drivers, Jonathan and David must navigate turns while simultaneously steering and operating the hand-controlled throttle. David, in one of his races, gets a penalty for cutting off a driver trying to pass him, and Jonathan, in one of his, spins out.
"It's fun. It's interesting. It's intense," Jonathan says. He was winning so many races another young driver once complained the adapted cart must be faster than the regular ones. "He tried it," Jonathan recalls, "and the second he tried it he went straight into the wall."
For David and his family, the trauma of the accident that led him to go-carting has receded. "It took a real lot, but we got past it," says Paul Eustace, a
For Jonathan and his family, the aftermath remains more immediate. Jonathan, who had three operations in 2007 alone, has yet to complete a year of school uninterrupted. Among his trophies from F1 is one that says, "Your spirit and your desire to succeed is something most won't achieve."
"My goal in life is to go to NASCAR," Jonathan says.
"After you finish college, of course," his mother says.
"You can drive in college," his father says.
"I'll be an engineer," Jonathan says, "because you have to know everything about the car."
