Taking Kids to the Speedway: A First-Timer's Guide
Taking kids to the speedway for the first time is one of the cheapest good nights out in Australia, and one of the easiest to get slightly wrong. Here is what we wish someone had told us.
Before you go
Pick the right night
Most Australian tracks run through the warmer months, roughly October to April, with meetings on Saturday nights. Check your nearest club's calendar and, if you can, choose a night with a junior class on the programme. Kids watching kids race lands differently to kids watching adults.
Avoid making your first meeting a huge championship event. They run late, the crowds are big and the queues are long. A normal club night is a better introduction.
Check the weather, then check the club's socials
Speedway is dirt. Rain cancels meetings, sometimes at short notice and sometimes after you have already left home. Every club posts updates on Facebook on the day. Look before you drive.
Ear protection is not optional
This is the single thing that decides whether a small child enjoys the night or asks to leave after ten minutes. A field of sprintcars at close range is genuinely loud, and children's ears are more vulnerable than adults'.
Get a pair of kids' earmuffs before you go. Do not plan to buy them at the track, and do not assume a child will tolerate foam plugs.
What to bring
- Ear protection for every child, and honestly for yourself
- Something warm. Even in summer, an open grandstand after dark gets cold
- A cushion or folding chair. Concrete seating gets hard around hour two
- Cash. Some canteens and gate entries are still cash-preferred
- A torch for the walk back across a dark paddock
- Clothes you do not mind marking. There will be dust, and the dust is part of it
- A drink bottle, because canteen queues are long at intermission
How a night actually runs
Most meetings follow the same shape. Gates open well before racing, often a couple of hours. Cars qualify or run heat races first — short, frequent, lots of them — and the night builds to finals or feature races for each class.
That structure is useful with kids, because the early heats are short and fast. If attention is fading, you have already seen plenty of racing by intermission and leaving early costs you less than you think.
Between races there is track work: graders and water trucks maintaining the surface. It looks like nothing is happening. It is actually the thing that makes the racing good, and most kids find the machinery interesting in its own right.
Where to sit
Turn one and turn two is where cars are sideways and where the passing happens. The main straight gives you the start and the finish line. Higher is better for seeing the whole track; lower is better for feeling it.
For a first night with young kids, sit somewhere you can leave from easily without climbing over forty people.
The pits
Many clubs allow a pit walk before racing, or run open days where you can get close to the cars. Ask at the gate. Standing next to a sprintcar while someone fires it up is the moment that converts a mildly interested child into a fan.
Managing expectations with little ones
Plan to leave before the last race. You lose very little and you avoid both the car park crush and a meltdown. A good first night that ends early beats a complete night that ends badly.
Expect questions about which car is which. Picking one driver to follow, ideally in a bright colour, gives a small child something to hold on to across an entire evening.
If they catch it
Some kids go once and shrug. Others do not stop talking about it for a week. If it is the second, Australian speedway has junior classes built for exactly that — junior sedans being the most common way in. Ages, licensing and car requirements vary by state and class, so ring your local club and ask what they run.
And for the six days a week that are not Saturday, that is more or less why we started making speedway play mats — somewhere for the racing to keep going on the lounge room floor. Our gift guide covers the other things worth buying a young fan, most of which we do not sell.
