The World We Live In: Meet Rajah Caruth

Meet Rajah Caruth, the 17-year-old eyeing a NASCAR career and a driver’s license

Newsela

Image 1. Rajah Caruth at the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Combine at New Smyrna Speedway on October 23, 2019, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Photo: Brian Cleary/Getty Images

Rajah Caruth is only 17 years old, but he has driven cars on racetracks at 150 miles per hour. He has met racing legends and might one day be a regular on the NASCAR racing circuit. However, to his mother, Samantha Caruth, he is a teen with a learner’s permit whose recent drive to the mall left her uncomfortable.

“He has this habit of using both his feet while he’s driving,” Samantha Caruth said. “He made me nervous.”

Rajah doesn’t yet have a driver’s license, having earned his permit in July 2019. However, he might already be the best race car driver in Washington, D.C.

Rajah was selected for the 2020 NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program. The program is designed to help the racing organization diversify motorsports. It has helped launch the careers of NASCAR drivers Bubba Wallace, who earned second place in the 2018 Daytona 500 race, and Daniel Suarez, the 2015 NASCAR Xfinity Series Rookie of the Year.

For Rajah, his first season racing late-model cars was to begin this spring at South Boston Speedway in Virginia. However, the NASCAR season, along with the rest of the sports world, is on hold because of the coronavirus outbreak.

His debut will have to wait.

“When Everything’s Ready To Pick Up, I’ll Be Ready”

“It’s impacted everyone, and we all have to adapt,” he said. “When everything’s ready to pick up, I’ll be ready. “Rajah said he’s been ready since he was a child, recalling when his father took him to see “Cars,” the animated movie about auto racing. “I was only 3 or 4 at the time,” he said, “but that movie stuck with me.” In fifth grade, he wrote in his journal, “I want to win the Daytona 500.”

On weekends, he watched televised NASCAR races. He begged his parents to allow him to attend a live race. One day in 2014, his father and grandfather picked him up from school and went on a long drive. Rajah had no clue about their destination. Then he saw the Richmond International Raceway in Virginia through the car windows.

“The moment I saw that track,” said Rajah, “I may or may not have cried.”

Rajah was in seventh grade at the time. “I knew at that moment that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.

He felt that way despite not seeing many drivers who looked like him.

Image 2. Rajah Caruth competes in a live-online NASCAR Truck Series race on the iRacing platform from his bedroom on March 19, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Caruth is the first driver with only an iRacing background to earn a spot in the NASCAR Driver for Diversity Driver Development Program. Photo: Patrick Smith/Getty Images

“Over the years the stars of the sport haven’t been a full reflection of the diverse landscape across the country,” said Jusan Hamilton. He is the NASCAR racing director and manager of the Drive for Diversity Program. “It’s for a number of reasons whether it’s proximity to racetrack exposures or with the way NASCAR has developed over the years where you see the same families in the sport. So the knowledge it takes to come into NASCAR and in the industry in general can be a challenge.”

“He Became A Walking NASCAR Encyclopedia”

Rajah’s parents gave him the book “NASCAR, The Complete History,” which he read repeatedly. “He became a walking NASCAR encyclopedia,” said his father, Roger Caruth. For his birthday in 2017, he got into an actual race car for the first time at the Autobahn Indoor Speedway in Jessup, Maryland. After Rajah posted a few good lap times while driving a go-kart, an instructor persuaded him to enter a league. The result was humbling.

“I sucked,” Rajah said. “I had no experience and I really didn’t know how to race.”

However, he learned and became more competitive. He won a semifinal race by the end of the summer. “That really fueled me,” Rajah said. “And it made me realize I cared about racing so much.”

In 2018, Roger Caruth worked with his son on goals, including types of racing. They discussed finishing high school and getting through college.

The first step was to get Rajah started on iRacing, a computer-based racing simulation that allows users to experience being behind the wheels of race cars. In 2018, his first year of iRacing, Rajah estimates that he ran 500 races on his home set-up and made the playoffs in one league.

Roger Caruth explored the costs of renting a race car at the tracks closest to Washington. Meanwhile, Rajah applied for a spot in the NASCAR Drive for Diversity Youth Development program in 2019.

Rajah Becomes Part Of Rev Racing

Eight young drivers traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, to compete, with Rajah earning one of the four spots and the right to race smaller versions of NASCAR cars in 2019 as part of Rev Racing. It is a NASCAR-supported racing team that was launched to develop female drivers and drivers of color.

Rajah performed so well in the youth program that he was encouraged to apply for the 2020 NASCAR Drive for Diversity Driver Development Program. Of the nearly 100 applications, 10 were selected to compete in October 2019. They drove cars that were bigger and faster than the ones Rajah had driven earlier in the year.

Roger Caruth said he was nervous watching his son compete, especially as he spun out in one of his laps.

By November 2019, NASCAR announced Rajah had earned one of the six spots. He became the only driver to advance to the NASCAR program with only an iRacing background and no real-world driving experience.

NASCAR officials are excited to have Rajah in the program, but he’ll have to wait until sports can safely return.

“He was really impressive coming out of that combine, given his level of experience,” said Hamilton.

Rajah also plans to attend college at Winston-Salem State University in the fall to study motorsport management and perhaps find time to get his driver’s license.

“That’s something I’m going to need,” he said.