Next Earnhardt Star Tearing It Up in NC

By Jeff Owens | Thursday, March 22, 2012
Karsyn Elledge, daughter of Kelley Earnhardt-Miller and niece of Dale Earnhardt Jr., is following her family into racing. // HAROLD HINSON, HHP/HAROLD HINSON

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It was obvious early in his career that Dale Earnhardt Jr. had inherited some of his racing talent from his famous father.

Now it appears there may be another family member with some of the Earnhardt racing genes.

And she’s a girl.

Karsyn Elledge, the daughter of Kelley Earnhardt-Miller and granddaughter of the late Dale Earnhardt, is making quite a name for herself racing Mini Outlaw cars on the dirt tracks of North Carolina.

Karsyn, 10, is entering her third season in the Mini Outlaw Series box stock division at Woodleaf (N.C.) Speedway and Millbridge Speedway in Salisbury, N.C.

In her first season in 2010, she scored three feature wins in nine starts and never finished worse than third. She also had four heat victories and capped her inaugural season by placing second in the 2010 East Coast Nationals at the Iredell County Fairgrounds.

Late last year she moved up to the 125cc go-kart class and won her very first race.

She is racing out of the shop owned by her father, NASCAR crew chief Jimmy Elledge, and has some support from JR Motorsports, which is owned by her uncle and run by her mom, Earnhardt-Miller.

Her uncle is impressed and a bit amazed by what he has seen so far.

“I’ve seen her race myself. She does really, really good,” Earnhardt Jr. said last week at Bristol Motor Speedway. “For whatever reason, she’s got the speed to be competitive, and she’s not scared of it at all.

“I don’t know how she knows how to go around a dirt track, and drive sideways and all those things, because she is just a little girl. But she knows. You know, she just knows.”

Her father, who is currently a crew chief for Turner Motorsports, says Earnhardt Jr. should see her now.

“She is doing well. It's impressive,” he said. “He hasn't seen her run the 125 yet. I think he needs to come see that. That's real impressive.”

Karsyn comes from a long line of racers. Her paternal great grandfather, Ralph Earnhardt, was a legendary short-track racer while her other great grandfather was highly regarded car builder Robert Gee.

They were followed, of course, by Dale Earnhardt Sr., the seven-time NASCAR Cup champion who was inducted into the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Her paternal grandfather, Terry Elledge, was a championship engine builder who built many of the engines Earnhardt won with and Elledge, her father, has won Cup races as a crew chief.

Even her mom raced, running Late Model cars as a teenager and young adult.

But it is her ties to Earnhardt Jr., NASCAR’s Most Popular Driver, that keeps gaining her attention. She introduced Earnhardt Jr. during driver introductions last year prior to the October race at Charlotte.

“That was really fun, but I was really nervous,” Karsyn said in a YouTube video produced by JR Motorsports. “There were like 80 billion people out there and I was afraid they were going to scream way, way too long to where (I) couldn’t hear or say anything.”

Asked in the video of she is good at racing, Karsyn said, “Yes, I’m very good. … I love racing.”

A fifth-grader, Karsyn says she’s not sure if she wants to pursue a career in racing because she has other hobbies, like horseback riding.

She’s banking, however, on her mother and uncle providing her with JR Motorsports backing when she gets older.

“I hope so, but I’m kinda worried about that,” she said, “because my uncle still refuses to sponsor me.”

She has a big fan, though, in the NASCAR Sprint Cup star. Earnhardt Jr., who has won 18 Cup races and made the Chase last year for Hendrick Motorsports, says he has been surprised by her knack for racing and her development.

“I didn’t see it coming, but she is a lot of fun to watch, and a lot of fun to listen to,” Earnhardt Jr. said. “It has really changed her as a person, too. I think the best thing about it is for her to get in there and do that really matured her as a person and made her a better individual to learn how to win, to learn how to lose and do those things with integrity.

“At first when she would lose, she wouldn’t do too well with that. She has become a much better person for it. I think it has helped her out tremendously away from the track, in school and everything else.”

Elledge also is surprised by his daughter’s development, but has been enjoying it.

“It probably is more gratifying as a parent than some of the things I have done in racing with rookie drivers,” he said. “I actually had no interest in her driving anything by no means, but she expressed interest in it and the rest has been kind of history.”

As a longtime racer from a racing family, Elledge said he is not worried about the dangerous aspects of the sport.

“I have run those type of karts myself and I know they are really safe,” he said. “As long as she is safe in it, I am not really that worried about it.

“She has flipped over in one already and she actually came back and won the race. I was kind of wondering how that would go, whether it would scare her to the point she didn't want to do it no more. She seems to be fairly fearless once she puts a helmet on.”

Now he appears to have a budding star.

“It is probably one of the only things that she has stuck with this long that she has been intrigued by and continues to be passionate about doing it every week,” he said. “I had no intentions of making the next Danica Patrick, but it looks like we might be on our way.”