Aiden Stone was 4 years old the first time his parents strapped him into the driver’s seat of a race car.
It did not go well.
“We put him in a go-kart (at Evergreen Fairgrounds’ Indoor Motorsports) in the wintertime,” Stone’s father Matt recounted. “He ran that one time and the throttle stuck wide open the first time out and he plowed into the wall. He was like, ‘Nope, not doing that.’”
But kids are nothing if not resilient, and now at 8 years old Stone is a race car champion whose racing is taking him across the western U.S. and Canada.
The Washington Quarter Midget Association (WQMA), which serves girls and boys ages 5-16 and races at its friendly little track tucked into the corner of the Evergreen Fairgrounds parking lot in Monroe, opens its 2023 season Sunday, with more than 100 cars across 17 classes expected to compete. Among the drivers will be Stone, who not only is beginning the defense of his Junior 160 title, but is in the midst of a busy 2023 race schedule he and his family hopes ends with a national championship.
Stone’s involvement in racing at such a young age comes naturally. The Snohomish resident is a fourth-generation racer, and both his father Matt and mother Angela were quarter midget racing champions when they were Stone’s age — they actually first met when Matt was 9 and Angela was 5, racing quarter midgets at the WQMA’s previous location near Paine Field in Everett. Stone was driving his first motorized vehicle, a Power Wheels car, before he turned 1.
Despite his initial mishap in a race car, Stone was compelled back into racing, in part because he has cousins of similar age who race. He did driver training at 6, won his first WQMA title as a rookie at 7, and now is racing both quarter midgets and junior sprints at 8, speeding 40-50 mph on both pavement and dirt.
“At first my dad did not want me to drive, but I really wanted to drive,” Stone said. “I just like going fast, it’s very fun.”
In addition to racing running in the family, Stone seems to have inherited an aptitude for the sport.
“He has that natural raw talent,” Matt Stone said. “He picks up on things quick and learns fast.
“We’re very fortunate to have a driver who leaves it all out on the racetrack every single race,” Matt Stone added. “You’ll see a lot of kids who if they get passed by one or two cars they’ll check out. It doesn’t matter if Aiden crashes or if I miss the setup, he tries the entire race.”
Success wasn’t immediate, as Stone spent the first half of his rookie season in the middle of the pack. But something clicked midseason, he began winning races, and he climbed all the way to the top of the Junior 160 points standings.
“I can’t really describe what changed, but he’s going for it,” Angela Stone said. “He has this drive and focus — he has little mantras he says to himself on the track.
“We let him dictate things,” Angela Stone added. “If he wants to just go play basketball or ride his bike he can do it, but if he wants to have the results on the racetrack he has to be willing to put in the work. And he’s very determined.”
The racing is stepping up a level this year. Stone is racing in three series: quarter midgets in Monroe, junior sprints in Deming, and the QMA Region 9 series, which consists of five quarter midget races at tracks in Washington, Oregon and Canada. Every weekend from now until September will be jam packed with racing, with junior sprint races on Fridays and quarter midgets on Saturdays or Sundays.
In addition, Stone is racing some events in the NASCAR Youth Series Western States tour. His first NASCAR race was last weekend in Tucson, Arizona, where in a field of more than 200 cars he placed second in Junior Honda, third in Junior 160 and fifth in Junior Animal. He received the event’s Hard Charger Award for going from the C Main all the way to second in the A Main of Junior Honda.
The big target is the QMA Western Grands in August in Langley, B.C., which is a de facto national championship. Stone finished second at Western Grands last year in Billings, Montana.
After that, who knows where Stone’s racing path will lead?
“As long as he’s having fun, that’s what it’s all about,” Matt Stone said. “We’re very realistic about this because we lived it before. Do we think he’s going to become the second coming of Kyle Larson, Kyle Busch or Jeff Gordon? No, we don’t. For us it’s about the friends he’s making and the memories we’re making all together.”
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