Youth female kart driver continues to impress
Keitt’s team is constantly working on her kart to allow her to run as fast as possible.
Cassidy Keitt is only in her third year of racing, but she is tearing it up on the track. At 10 years old, she is dominating kids two to three years her elder. She finished second in overall points this season and if not for a crash during her final race, she may have been taking home her second championship in three years.
Two years ago, in her first full season on the track, Keitt was crowned the 2017 Beginner Box Stock Champion at the Mill Bridge Speedway in Salisbury. Keitt stepped up in competition in 2018 racing in the Box Stock Division and finished eighth overall.
“Things are good and it’s fun, but sometimes it’s a bit difficult, but we get through,” said Keitt of her step up in competition. “Sometimes I get a bit frustrated, but I just go with the flow. I wish I could win every time, but I just go out there and try my best.”
Keitt said she was excited to finish second overall this past season, but was somewhat upset with herself that she didn’t bring home the points championship. She has two more seasons to run on this level and fully expects to finish on top.
“In the next two years, I feel confident about finishing first and to constantly keep winning,” she said.
Being one of the few young ladies on the track, Keitt does not get a lot of compliments from the young boys, because she is one of the best racers, she said. It also does not help that she is younger than most of the best racers out there.
“Sometimes I think they are surprised that I am younger and I’m a girl and that I am dominating most of them,” she continued.
When it comes to her friends at school, Keitt said they “think it’s cool” she is a kart driver, especially the boys.
Keitt has a great team behind her to make sure her car is running in peak condition every race. Justin Keitt (dad), Ryan Sparks (uncle) and Bobby Sparks (grandfather), feel Cassidy has the talent to take racing as far as she wants, if she puts in the work.
“I feel like she has progressed quite a bit and not only her, but us as a team, because it is a team sport,” said Ryan Sparks. “It is a team sport, it’s pretty tough and us moving up and taking on a new kart a couple years ago, it took us a little while to get it set up right to get her what she needed to go fast.
“That was one part of it, and it caused some frustrations on her thinking that she wasn’t good enough at some point, but we really just had to get that final setup meshed together before we could move forward. Now we have a good baseline setup with a good driver and we’re looking for good things next year for sure.”
With success coming so quickly for Keitt in her first full season, it was difficult for her to adjust to not winning as often when she made the step up in competition. Those tough times seem to have made her a better driver in the long run, said Sparks.
“Between the three of us, we’ve got a lot of experience in racing and it was actually probably a good thing, because you lose a lot more than you win in this sport, so you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” Sparks said about the tough times Keitt has endured in the sport. “It built a lot of character over the first season and that’s what you’re going to need to move forward, because the higher you move up in the ranks, the stiffer the competition.”
To get her better prepared for the next season, Keitt’s team has been running her in different styles of racing to give her a leg up on the competition.
“We first went to that just to build different tools, both physically and mentally, so that will give her a different aspect moving forward,” Sparks continued. “With road racing, it takes a lot more preparation to be good at it and it’s just a steppingstone moving forward in all forms of racing.”
When it comes to her future, her team feels it’s up to Keitt to determine how far she wants to go. Keitt says she wants to move on to Legends racing after her current division and into NASCAR one day.
Keitt and her team wanted to thank all her sponsors for their continued support. Daatsright Deliveries, Black Sand Company, Team Dillon, Royal Properties of the Carolinas Inc., Pit Stops for Hope, Broken Buddy Print Co., Browns Handyman Service, Andy’s Frozen Custard and Mock Tire and Automotive have all contributed to the Keitt racing team.
