4-Year Old Racing Whiz

Leonardo Panayioutou is a normal four year-old who 'lives and breathes motor racing'. Except in his case, he gets to fulfill his passion twice or thrice a week on a real track. For this pint-sized British boy is already an amazing Go-Kart racer.

Leonardo, who drives a spiffy $4,000 USD Bambino Kart with a 60cc engine, can already race at speeds of up to 50mph and is outracing kids three times his age. In fact, his father sheepishly admits that Leonardo even outraces him sometimes, and he's been racing for over 15 years.

Leonardo, whose uncle is a professional racer, experienced his first Go-Kart at the age of three, when his father introduced him to a 50cc Cadet Kart, with a speed limit of 30mph. He became so good, so fast that his father had to upgrade his Kart to the current, more powerful one.

The four-year old gets to race in his Go-Kart at the Rye House Kart Raceway in Hertfordshire, England, two to three times a week, for up to five hours at a time and loves every minute of it. While his mother was initially nervous, she has gotten used to seeing him whizzing around at such high speeds.

In fact, Leonardo is so good that he is being compared to the current British Formula One sensation Lewis Hamilton, who started his racing career, Go-Karting at the same track, at the age of eight. While Leonardo is years away from racing, his talents have not gone un-noticed. A consortium of companies, which includes energy drink manufacturer Red Bull, recently paid $30,000 USD for a three-year contract to sponsor him. Pretty Awesome Isn't It?

Sources: Gridcrasher.com, Skynews.com, Dailymail.co.uk