Photo courtesy of the Greer family.
Reuben Greer with his go-kart.
Reuben Greer is a typical little boy doing typical little-boy things: going to school, playing with friends and aggravating his little sisters and foster brother. However, one thing sets this 9-year-old apart from his peers — Reuben is a go-kart racing champion.
A second grader at Vestavia Hills Elementary West, Reuben was introduced to go-kart racing by his father, Stephen, when he was just 4 years old and began competing at the age of 6. Instead of spending his weekends on the soccer field or basketball court, Reuben and Stephen Greer travel around the country racing in go-kart hot spots like North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Racing in the Cadet class, for kids ages 6 through 12, Reuben competes with, and routinely beats, drivers much older than him, while zipping around road courses at speeds topping out at 72 miles per hour. Stephen Greer said the transformation since Reuben started racing as a 6-year-old has been amazing.
"Right now, he's racing against some kids that are several years older than him, and one of the things that makes a big difference is maturity,” Stephen Greer said. “He started in Cadet when he was 6. So he was 6 years old racing against 12-year-old kids that have been racing that go-around as long as he's been alive. It’s hard to compete.
“Can you imagine football or another sport and the difference between a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old?” he added. “"There's not many 6-year-olds that can compete with someone that much older and mature. He's finally starting to catch up with some of the older kids. It's fun to see."
In March, Reuben won championships in two categories — four-stroke engines and the more powerful two-stroke engines — at the 2024 AMP Kart Racing Championship in Atlanta. While the two-stroke engines go-karts are faster and give the driver more options to accelerate and pass, it was in the four-stroke competition that Reuben displayed his abilities behind the wheel.
"In four-stroke races, no one ever pulls away. Everyone sits in each other's draft, kind of like NASCAR," Stephen Greer said. "He was able to pull away and won by three or four seconds, which is kind of unheard of in that class."
While the Greer home is like any house in Vestavia Hills, Reuben’s room is a virtual shrine to automobile racing. Shelves are packed with trophies, toy cars line his desk and posters of professional race car drivers are pinned to his walls. Despite living in NASCAR territory, Reuben’s favorite driver is IndyCar superstar Will Power, and he hopes to follow in his hero’s footsteps one day.
Soft-spoken and relatively shy during his interview with the Vestavia Voice, Reuben said he doesn’t have much of a pre-race routine. After putting on his race suit, gloves and helmet, he said he’s ready to get behind the wheel.
"I really don't have anything. I just say, ‘OK, I'm ready. Let's go,'" Reuben said.
A native of Ireland, Stephen Greer started racing go-karts at the age of 6 as well, and he continued to race cars and motorcycles throughout his teens and early 20s.
He immigrated to the United States while touring as a guitar player for the Christian rock band Bluetree. Now a member of the Vestavia Hills Board of Zoning Adjustment and an engineer with his own firm, these days Stephen Greer spends most of his spare time and energy tending to his son’s racing activities, which, he says, is more enjoyable.
"I get the karts ready, so there's a lot of prep that goes into the karts. There's a lot of setup and gear changes," Stephen Greer said. "We have these tachometers that have all of the data of lap times, revs and speeds, and we try to figure out what gear he should be in."
“I’d rather watch him race,” he said.
