WHITELAND, Indiana — How do you tell your eight-year-old son that his hero just died?

Amanda Cox woke her son up late that night, worried if she waited until morning the news would shatter his entire day, maybe his entire week. “You need to pray for Justin,” she’d been telling him since the accident, “he’s been hurt really bad.” So that’s what they did. They prayed.

Justin Wilson wasn’t just her son’s favorite driver; he was Elliot’s inspiration. Justin had dyslexia. Elliot had dyslexia. Justin drove in the Indianapolis 500. One day, Elliot was going to do the same.

They’d met in Gasoline Alley a few years back, made a video together, posed for photos, exchanged emails and tweets. Pretty soon Elliot had a sign hanging in his room, a quote from Justin. “Dyslexia doesn’t stop me,” it read, and it was that quote, and that driver, that helped Elliot ditch his fear. He used to hate it when his teachers would call on him in class, asking him to read in front of everyone. How was he supposed to tell her he’d see spaces instead of words? That, sometimes, the letters would float around on the page instead of staying put?

“I was the slowest reader, and people would make fun of me,” Elliot remembers.

But if there was an IndyCar driver who’d overcome the same symptoms and could churn out laps around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway north of 230 miles an hour? That’s all Elliot needed to hear. In his bedroom, he framed that quote, Justin’s racing head sock, a 4x6 of them together. He placed one of Justin’s old visors on his mantle, next to all the trophies he kept winning for all the go-kart races he kept dominating.

When Amanda Cox walked into her son’s room that night, there to give him the tragic news, she saw the shrine to the driver her son idolized. When he heard, Elliot pulled the covers over his face and said he wanted to be alone.

And for a few days, he kept saying he wanted to quit racing.

Good thing he didn’t.

Almost four years have passed since a piece of debris at Pocono Raceway ended Wilson’s life. Elliot Cox, a sixth grader at Gray Road Christian School, has become an 11-year-old phenom. He's won 82 races and a national Superkart title. He’s raced all over the country, and as far away as Italy. He has 25 sponsors. He works with a vision coach, a personal trainer and a mental toughness coach. He has a small role as a stunt driver in the upcoming racing film Rapid Response.

And most important, he’s hoisted Wilson’s mission on his shoulders. Elliot's spoken in front of the Indiana House of Representatives, urging them to pass a bill on dyslexia screening. (They did. Unanimously.) He’s started his own charity, one that’s raised more than $50,000 for the Dyslexia Institute of Indiana. He’ll be standing outside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Friday, Carb Day, selling lemonade, then donating the $10,000 worth of profits to Alex’s Lemonade Stand, which supports childhood-cancer research.

That’s where history always comes back to: Something about IMS, about race week in Indianapolis, about the magic of the 500. He was two years old when his parents first took him to the track, five when he found his favorite spot, just inside Turn 1, and told them he was watching the drivers roar past so he could learn his lines for when he was the one behind the wheel.

“I like going there and just imagining what it’s going to be like,” Elliot says. “The anticipation – it’s like every year, I’m just that much closer.”

That’s the thing: Elliot Cox doesn’t just want to race in the Indianapolis 500.

He doesn’t just want to win the Indianapolis 500.

He wants to be the youngest Indianapolis 500 champion ever.

***

An accident, all of this: They went out for a dirt bike, Elliot and his grandpa, and came home with a go-kart. Mom freaked.

“You’ve lost your mind,” she told them.

“She said I’d never drive it,” Elliot says six years later, smiling, slipping on his race suit inside the garage they rent out at Whiteland Raceway Park.

Eventually, they wore her down. If he was going to drive the thing, mom figured, he might as well do it safely. She sprung for lessons and watched his passion bloom. And for a few weeks, Travis Cox actually thought his son’s interest would come and go, that he’d end up back on a baseball diamond or basketball court. He didn’t even go to the track the first few times they went. “Wanted nothing to do with it,” Travis says now, laughing at the irony. “I didn’t even know what a carburetor or a clutch was when we started.”

Now he’s chief mechanic.

It didn’t click right away, but it didn’t take long. Travis remembers the first time Elliot floored the gas pedal. He remembers racing over to him after he crashed, worried sick. “He’s got this huge smile on his face,” Travis says, “and he tells me, ‘Dad, that didn’t hurt at all.’ Then he did it again. He crashes, and there are tires flying all over the place, and he’s like, ‘Dad, that was pretty cool.’ From there, I can’t explain it, he can’t explain it, but it just clicked. He got fast.”

And he’s gotten faster. Elliot won his first race at five and has piled up victories ever since. The family, aided tremendously by Elliot’s sponsors, spends summers trekking around the country: Las Vegas, New Orleans, Sonoma, Calif., Salt Lake City, even Lonato, Italy, where Elliot competed as part of Team USA in the Rok International Final last fall. Ask him about his ambitions and he lists the steps he needs to take in quick succession: “In a few years I’m looking to get into Formula 4 cars, then the USF 2000 (series), then Pro Mazdas, then Indy Lights, then IndyCars.” He is an 11-year-old with a plan.

Part of the plan includes regular visits with Dr. Joe LaPlaca, an optometrist who helps athletes improve their visual processing. Among his clients – IndyCar drivers, the Indy Eleven soccer team and the baseball squad at Butler University – Elliot is the youngest. The aim: to slow races down, in a sense, allowing Elliot to react quicker from behind the wheel.

“Just like any muscle in your body, your eyes need to be conditioned and trained and strengthened,” LaPlaca says. “We’re working to speed up how his brain processes information. Even a split second, even a hundredth of a second, can become an advantage.”

Like, say, when an accident happens right in front of him.

“When wrecks happen,” Elliot explains, “I used to drive straight into them. I couldn’t see it quick enough. Now I can and I go around it quickly.”

In addition to LaPlaca, Elliot trains with Zach Dirr at Elite Performance and works with Ben Newman, a renowned mental coach who’s consulted with the University of Alabama football team. The commitment, from two parents who knew absolutely nothing about competitive racing before their son came home with a go-kart six years ago, is staggering. “This was never the plan,” Travis says.

“But,” adds his wife, “when your son tells you this is what God made him to do, it’s kinda hard to say no.”

***

Yes, she struggles with the inherent danger involved in her 11-year-old son racing at speeds nearing 70 miles an hour. Any mom would. For Amanda, the first lap is always the worst. She sits in the bleachers, her stomach in knots, and mouths a prayer each time the green flag approaches.

Please keep him safe. Please keep him safe.

“He’d kill me for telling you this,” she says, “but the nerves are so bad. I’m a wreck. Then, after that first turn, all bets are off and you just want him to win.”

The crashes come. Most are small. Some are not. Elliot flipped his kart during a race last year and had to be checked out by an ambulance. “They literally had to pick me up off the ground,” Amanda remembers. “He was so embarrassed.”

Elliot, meanwhile, was fine. The minute he was cleared, he asked if he could jump back in the race.

He swims in the winters, but racing has become his life. He tried baseball one spring, but during a game early in the season, he scurried into the bathroom, vowing that he didn’t feel well. On their way home he asked if they could head to the track. He wanted to get some laps in.

“I don’t like ball sports,” Elliot says, “because I’m pretty bad at them.”

Ask him what kind of kid he’d be without his go-kart, and he shrugs. “A boring one,” he says. The thought of sitting on the couch and playing video games does nothing for him.

He also knows it’s still a tremendously steep uphill climb from here: full-time rides in the NTT IndyCar Series are hard to get and even harder to keep. He’s prepping. He recently slipped on a suit and had a meeting with a potential sponsor. (It worked. They signed on.) He doesn’t shy away from his lofty goals. What if it doesn’t work out? What’s his backup plan?

“Don’t have one,” Elliot says.

That includes NASCAR. At least for now. “IndyCars don’t have fenders and I like to be out in the open,” he says. “Plus NASCARs look like Nissans. IndyCars are cool.”

So, if the goal remains unchanged – become the youngest Indy 500 winner in history – Elliot has a decade to make it happen. Troy Ruttman won the 1952 Indy 500 at 22 years and two months. Elliot would be 21 years and nine months old at the start of the 2029 race.

It'd be a triumph his hero, and his inspiration – the late Justin Wilson – would have loved to see.

"I don't even care what kind of milk they give me," Elliot says, smiling at the thought.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.