Marble Falls High School junior and racer Clayton Green on fast career track

DANIEL CLIFTON • PICAYUNE EDITOR

MARBLE FALLS — As 16-year-old Clayton Green maps out a race in his mind, he runs through every possible scenario — to the point he even predicts what his fellow racers will do.

“I’ve raced enough against most of the other racers that I pretty much know what they’ll do, and then, I can set up for it,” said Green, a Marble Falls High School junior. In a race where a hundredth of a second separates winning and second place, a quick reaction can determine not only a race but an entire season.

As a race car driver in the Legends Pro Class division, Green understands how reaction time matters. He also knows distractions while driving can lead to serious consequences.

Recently, Green signed on with the organization Finish Alive Stop Texting (FAST) to promote an anti-texting-while-driving message.

“They’re now one of my sponsors,” Green said. “Which is a big deal. There are not too many 16-year-olds who have sponsorships in any sport.”

Green’s mother, Dana Green, said her son’s racing abilities caught the attention of FAST, which led to the arrangement. She said it took some serious thought by her son before going ahead with the deal.

“Before, he was racing on his own, so he didn’t really have to worry about how far he went with racing,” she said. “Now, once you sign on with somebody, you have to think about what their expectations and goals for you are as well. Clayton really had to think about if (racing) was something he wanted to do for the next four to five years and how committed to it he wanted to be.”

Clayton isn’t new to the sport. His racing résumé started about 10 years ago when he caught the bug from his father, Steven Green.

Clayton’s dad was a regular competitor around race tracks, and he took his son along with him. But as a child, Clayton often found himself stuck in the trailer away from the action.

Sitting around and waiting wasn’t Clayton’s idea of having fun.

“I just got tired of sitting in the trailer and told my dad I wanted to race,” Clayton said.

So Steven did the one thing he thought would appease his son: He stuck him in a go-cart and let him race. Clayton’s ability quickly grew. From go-carts, he graduated to Bandoleros, a type of car that is fairly small (70-inch wheel base) and uses a 30-horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine. Even with that size motor, Clayton found himself racing around tracks at speeds of up to 70 mph.

As a middle school student, Clayton captured the national championship in the Bandolero class, which led him to move up to the Legends division.

A Legends car resembles a small roadster with a low-slung hood and aggressive styling. It relies on a 122-horsepower Yamaha motor for speed.

The entire class started in 1992 as a way to allow more people to get into the sport of racing. Typically, full-size race cars come with an expensive price tag. The Legends cars offer a less expensive way to race.

And while some people do it for fun, Clayton developed skills that put him in the driver’s seat of a potential racing career.

After a couple years of racing Legends cars, he moved up to the Pro Division this year and often found himself ahead of the pack. He won a race on Labor Day weekend at the Houston Motorsports Park, where he netted $4,000.

“If you look at what he’s done and accomplished as young as he is and what he’s up against, it’s really amazing,” his mother said.

To compete takes more than Clayton’s commitment; it also takes the willingness of his parents to support him and travel across the country with him. Over the past several years, the Greens have chased checkered flags across Texas and the Southeast. While the bulk of the racing takes place in Texas, they do occasionally make trips to Georgia and North Carolina.

“We race 48 out of the 52 weekends of the year,” Dana Green said. “We’re a family team. We’re a budget team. These other racers, they have crews. We’re out there together.”

“Yeah, I have a dad and a mom,” Clayton said with a grin.

Dana Green added that a lot of the recent success come with the support of Marble Falls High School staff. She praised the willingness of Principal Manny Lunoff and her son’s teachers to work with him so he can maintain his weekend race schedule.

The overall championship is decided by points acquired during the season. The more races a driver enters, the more opportunities to earn points. With that in mind, the advantage clearly favors East Coast — especially North Carolina — drivers.

“In Texas, you have a race just about every weekend,” Dana Green said. “In North Carolina, they can race five days a week.”

Whatever their system is, it’s working. As the 2013 season winds down, Clayton finds himself in the No. 2 or No. 3 positions at races despite several of his competitors being older and more experienced. It’s not uncommon for Clayton to face racers in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

Clayton believes the national championship is out of reach this year, but he’s aiming for at least No. 2.

Along they way, he hopes to spread the message of the dangers of texting and driving. Ironically, Clayton, though 16, doesn’t hold a driver’s license. He’s just too busy racing.

Still, he fits the mold of the spokesperson for whom FAST wants, his mother said.

“They want somebody like Clayton who’s young and races because other kids, hopefully, will realize if this highly-skilled race car driver can’t text and drive, how do they think they can?” Dana Green said.

As for racing, he’s eyeing a move to an entire different class: the modified. As a NASCAR class, it’s a step toward the major leagues. While he’s solidified his name as a top-level competitor in Bandoleros and Legends cars, Clayton’s dreams are even bigger.

“Where do I want to go with this?” he mused, when asked about his future racing plans. “For every kid who does my sport, it is to make it a profession. Maybe it’s not Saturday night racing, but one of those professional divisions.”

Go to www.finishalivestoptexting.org for more information on FAST and www.uslegendcars.com for more on Legends cars racing.

daniel@thepicayune.com