A 14-year-old racer.
A platform built like a race team.
Max Poole is a 14-year-old kart racer from Pontefract. He races in Club100 and Midland Karting. He needed more than a website — he needed a platform that made sponsors believe in a teenager with a helmet and a dream. We built him one that feels like racing.
Most weekends, it's a family, a car, the drive, and a lot of effort just to get on track.
Kart racing isn't cheap. A Club100 season entry runs £2,200. Travel to UK tracks adds 2,000+ miles a year. Mechanics courses, safety kit, season costs — it stacks up fast. For a 14-year-old with a family behind him and no corporate backing, every race weekend is a small miracle of logistics and determination.
Max needed a way to tell his story, show his results, and most importantly — give people a reason to support him. The site had to do three things: make sponsors feel like they were backing a serious driver, give supporters total transparency about where their money goes, and look like racing while doing it.
Not a business website with a racing skin. The real thing. Dark. Fast. The kind of site where you hear the revs just looking at it.
What Max was dealing with
- ✗No online presence beyond a GoFundMe link — nothing that told his story
- ✗Sponsors had no way to see results, track progress, or understand the commitment
- ✗Race results scattered across different championship websites — no single view
- ✗Funding breakdown wasn't visible — supporters couldn't see what their money paid for
- ✗Young driver, small operation — every race weekend funded by family and local supporters
A brand built on adrenaline and gratitude
Most personal brand sites for athletes are templated, sterile, forgettable. Max's needed to feel like his racing — raw, honest, and fast.
Racing, Not Marketing
Carbon fibre backgrounds, SVG aero streams, telemetry-style data visualisation. The design vocabulary came from the track and the paddock — not from a template marketplace. Every visual decision said "racing."
Total Transparency
The cost breakdown section shows exactly where every pound goes — Club100 entry, travel fund, mechanics course. Each with a progress bar. Sponsors don't guess at impact; the numbers are right there on the page.
The Pit Wall
Sponsors don't get a footnote in an email — they get a dedicated wall with their logo and a direct link. Every raffle buyer, every supporter, every business backing a 14-year-old. Visible, permanent, and earned.
Six pages. One story. No unnecessary complexity.
We built a static site with Tailwind CSS and vanilla JS that loads instantly and feels like a racing dashboard. No bloated JavaScript framework, no CMS, no server-side rendering. Just clean code doing exactly what it needs to do.
1 The Hero
Full-viewport dark section with floating aero stream SVG animations. Carbon fibre background pattern, racing telemetry ticker. Max's age and championship classes visible before the first scroll. "14. Pontefract. Club100. Adrenaline keeps me calm and focused."
2 The Story
From Hot Wheels and Cars on repeat, to TeamSport Leeds, to outdoor Club100 racing. A personal narrative section with polaroid-style image gallery, timeline cards, and Max's own words. "When I'm on track, everything else drops away." The story builds the emotional case for support — no begging, just honesty.
3 Telemetry
Race results displayed as telemetry data — podium finishes, fastest laps, championship standings. Visual stat cards with racing-themed data styling. Timeline with photo lightbox. This is what sponsors and supporters check after race weekends. It makes Max's performance tangible and trackable.
4 Support & Pit Wall
Where the site earns its keep. Three funding items with progress bars — Club100 entry, travel fund, mechanics course. Below that, the Pit Wall: a grid of supporter logos with direct links, sponsored slots, and a Wall of Fame for everyone who contributed through GoFundMe. The business model is built into the design.
Dark. Fast. Built for a 14-year-old racer.
Every section earns its place on the grid. Desktop and mobile, same intensity.
Desktop: full-bleed racing at any resolution
Mobile: race-ready on any screen
This isn't a website. It's a pit crew.
Most athlete websites are brochureware — here's my photo, here's my sponsor logos, goodnight. Max's site does work between race weekends.
Design That Earns Trust
Dark mode isn't a toggle — it's the whole platform. Carbon fibre, racing gradients, SVG aero streams. This aesthetic makes a 14-year-old look serious. Sponsors land and think: "This kid is committed." The design does half the selling before they read a word.
Data That Makes the Case
P3 podium at Midland Karting Winter Junior Champs. P2 at GYG Club100 Round 2. Fastest lap at Warden Law. These aren't decorative stats — they're evidence. Every number on the site answers the question: "Is this kid worth backing?"
Transparency as Strategy
The support section doesn't say "please donate." It says: Club100 entry £2,200 — 35% funded. Travel fund — needs support. Mechanics course — 50% there. Specific amounts, progress bars, linked to GoFundMe. Supporters see exactly what their money does and how much is left to raise.
What's under the bodywork
A deliberately light stack. The compiled output is pure HTML and CSS — fast by design, not by optimisation. Tailwind handles the CSS, PostCSS compiles it down, and the browser gets exactly what it needs.
Why So Light?
This site has six content pages. Tailwind's utility classes compile to the smallest possible CSS. The carbon fibre pattern is CSS. The aero streams are inline SVGs. The telemetry ticker is a handful of vanilla JS.
Every decision was measured against a single question: does this help Max attract support? If not, it didn't ship.
The result: a site that loads before you blink, works on every device, and costs nothing to run. No database calls, no server-side rendering, no JavaScript framework overhead between the browser and the content.
Developer Insight // Winston
"There's something honest about how this site comes together. The carbon fibre pattern is four CSS gradients layered together — no image assets, no bloat, no performance budget blown on a background. The aero streams are inline SVGs animated with CSS. The telemetry ticker is a handful of vanilla JS. Tailwind compiles down to the smallest possible CSS, and the browser gets exactly what it needs. Sometimes the right stack is the simplest one that delivers — and this site proves it."
Developer Insight // Rob
"Most of our builds are business websites — service pages, contact forms, you know the drill. This one was completely different. Max needed a platform that felt like racing, and we got to design every pixel with a 14-year-old racer in mind. No boardroom. No marketing-speak. Just making something he'd be proud to show a potential sponsor. These are the builds that remind you why you started building websites."
Got a project that doesn't fit a template?
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More case studies
See what else we've built — hand-coded, no templates.