FAIRMONT, W.VA. No prom for this senior while he races hot rods

Josh Starcher is the latest teenager to hit the NHRA circut, following the likes of Cristen Powell and the Enders sisters.
FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) -- Josh Starcher stares down the chassis of a 6,000-horsepower top fuel dragster, gives the thumbs up, and prepares for another quarter-mile ride at speeds over 300 mph.
There's no time to think about anything else -- such as missing the prom.
As his East Fairmont High School classmates prepared for their dance, Starcher was at Bristol, Tenn., in his second National Hot Rod Association Top Fuel event.
"I'd miss a prom every weekend to go racing," the 18-year-old said.
Especially against the sport's best.
Latest on circuit
Starcher is the latest teenager to hit the NHRA circuit, following the likes of Cristen Powell and Australia's Andrew Cowin in Top Fuel dragsters, and sisters Erica and Courtney Enders in other classes.
His debut came 15 months after he completed a driving school for Top Fuel dragsters and got an immediate offer to go behind the wheel for Charlotte, N.C.-based Colhart Motorsports.
Starcher wouldn't have gotten this far if not for NHRA's Jr. Drag Racing League, where he got started at age 11.
NHRA opened up drag racing and other model cars to younger drivers in 1992.
Developed skills
The JDRL started to develop not only the interest among young drivers, but live skills, because they race on the same track as the professionals and go through the same mechanical motions, only at slower speeds.
The half-scale dragsters are powered by five-horsepower engines that produce speeds up to 85 mph on a 1/8-mile track. Young drivers move into other classes and higher speeds as they get older.
The league now has more than 4,000 participants from ages 8 to 17.
"They're probably better drivers than we are," said Top Fuel veteran "Big Daddy" Don Garlits.
Safety is at the forefront, and despite the risk of something going wrong at high speeds, part of the learning process for youngsters is overcoming fear.
"I've raised my kids with a little bit of a different mentality about faith and fear," said Gregg Enders, father of Courtney and Erica, the subjects of the recent Disney movie "Right on Track."
"Faith is imagining what you'd like to have happen and fear is imagining what you don't want to have happen," he said. "It all just depends on which camp you live in, whether you live your life afraid to ever leave your couch, or if you go out and just live life really full."
College freshman
Erica Enders, 19, has been racing for 10 years. When she's not attending classes at Texas A & amp;M as a freshman, she races in the NHRA's Super Comp and Super Gas classes, designed for speeds under 200 mph.
Erica will move up to the 250-mph A-Fuel class next year, then hopefully to Top Fuel.
"I feel much, much safer putting my teenage girls in a race car with a fire suit, a helmet, roll cage and all the safety provisions," Gregg Enders said. "I feel much better about putting them in that situation than I do than when I let them go on a date."