"Rick Waddell joins the NAKA Board of Directors" JANUARY 16, 2002 - The North American Karting Association, LLC, has announced that Mr. Richard (Rick) W. Waddell of Edmonds, Washington is the newest member of the NAKA Board of Directors. Rick will join the Board at its next meeting January 21st in Palm Springs, California. He has a background in aviation and computers, actively developing several software companies and is currently is General Manager of Platform Engineering, MSN Operations, at Microsoft. Born in Schenectady, New York, Rick Waddell has been a race fan all of his life. From watching sprint cars in Ohio to CART racing in Long Beach, he recognized the lack of American drivers and developed a passion became to help bring these domestic drivers to the top levels of open wheel racing. This developed into Rick Waddell's Kart2CART program which parallels Bryan Herta and Hollis Brown's concept, with the CART Stars of Tomorrow program. "I am very happy to be a part of NAKA and it's administration of the CART Stars of Tomorrow program", said Waddell, "Karting is the now recognized as the initial step to a career in open wheel racing, and we will now have the 'system' that is available in the rest of the world to develop first class racing drivers." The North American Karting Association, LLC, is a trade organization that serves the entire karting industry at all levels and, through its NAKA RACING division, administrates the CART Stars of Tomorrow series. Click here to visit the NAKA website!