PALMETTO, Fla. (WFLA) – While the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg is only a few days away, some of the professional drivers helped raise funds to benefit Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital on Wednesday.

More than a dozen of those drivers participated in the 12th Annual Kart for Kids Pro-Am Race at Anderson RacePark in Palmetto.

“Being a parent obviously is a big engine to get you to support these incentives,” NTT INDYCAR SERIES and IMSA Sportscar Driver Sebastien Bourdais said. “I’ve got a lot of other friend drivers that are young families, young kids and they can relate.”

Amateur teams also had the opportunity to hop into some karts to race on the track.

The annual race has helped fund research on concussions at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.

“So I play soccer and during one of the games, I got a ball to my head, like right in my temple,” Chance Rabin, 16, said.

Rabin suffered a concussion in 2021 and was one of the patients at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.

“Every two weeks I would meet with a doctor and she would give me a test just to see that my brain was healing right,” she said.

The Kart for Kids Pro-Am Race has raised more than a million dollars for this initiative over the past several years.