Sprint Car Superstar

By Samantha Cunningham

March 1st, 2010

Steve Kinser is the king of World of Outlaws Sprint Cup racing. There’s no question about it. He’s been racing practically since he could reach the pedals. Racing seems to be in his blood, as the Kinser family has built a legacy to be reckoned with. He’s won the Knoxville Nationals 12 times. He’s been voted onto the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association All-America team a record 20 times. He’s in the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame, and he’s still driving. In 2008, ESPN named him one of the Top 25 Drivers of All Time. Even the other racers refer to him as “the king.” If that doesn’t convince you, maybe his 20 championship wins in the series will.

The No. 11 driver for Quaker State was born in Bloomington, Ind., in 1954 to Bob and Zelbert Kinser, part of a family who would become known for racing. “My dad basically started everything, just as a hobby. He got involved with racing in the ’50s,” Kinser explains. “They didn’t really have sprint cars or open-wheel cars like they do now.” Kinser grew up around the racetracks and watched the sport evolve. His talent was evident from the beginning and has remained strong over the years. “When I first started, I was the youngest guy out here racing,” he says, “and now I’m the oldest guy, by far.”

SPRINT CAR RACING

Today there are numerous specifications regarding the car’s weight, engine, transmission, horsepower, wheelbase and more, but drivers used to say that sprint car racing was strictly “run whatcha brung.” There weren’t a whole lot of rules or regulations in the early days. Drivers were free to roam all over in search of the biggest prizes. “They started calling them outlaws, because they’d run in and win a race here, win a race there and take off back to where a promoter was

putting on a big race,” Kinser recollects. “Once they started getting that reputation, the promoters would start hiring them to come into those shows to bring more people in. So they started calling a lot of those early guys outlaw racers, and I wasn’t far from it.”

In 1978, a man named Ted Johnson start ed a sanctioned body of racers and dubbed it the World of Outlaws (WoO). Kinser took home the inaugural championship and hasn’t looked back.

According to Dirt 101 on the World of Outlaws Web site (www.worldofoutlaws.com), the World of Outlaws is “the premier sanctioning body for winged sprint car racing in the world, and [is composed] of sprint car drivers from across the country and the world.” Sprint cars are custom fabricated open-wheel racecars with a high ratio of power to weight. The cars must weigh at least 1,375 pounds with the driver in the car, and the cars’ engines produce approximately 850 horsepower. The cars feature large adjustable wings on the top and large rear tires that transfer their power to the dirt tracks they race on.

The wings on top of the car have sideboards that face opposite directions. The wings “help to produce a great amount of downforce to help keep the car planted on the track and turn in the corners,” notes Dirt 101. “The wings also help to absorb energy in the case of the car getting airborne in an accident.”

The racing season typically lasts from February to November, and races take place from coast to coast on dirt tracks anywhere from a quarter-mile long to 5/8-mile long. Dirt 101 points out, “The schedule usually consists of about 85 events and is considered one of the most grueling in all of motorsports nationwide.”

At a World of Outlaws race event, a session of about three hot laps to warm up the cars’ engines precedes the time trials on the first night. During the time trials, each racer is given two timed laps to determine his or her starting position for the heat races.

Heat races are eight- to 12-lap races, depending on the size of the track, that determine whether cars will move on to the A-Main (also known as A-Feature) or BMain.

Next comes the dash, with the top drivers from each heat drawing straws for their starting position in the dash. The top 10 finishers in the dash earn the top 10 starting positions later in the A-Main.

The B-Main, also referred to as the “Last Chance Showdown,” is a driver’s final opportunity to make it into the A-Main. Usually the top four finishers in the B-Main earn a spot in the main event.

The A-Main is the last and ultimate race of the event and decides the overall winner. The A-Main race usually ranges from 25 to 40 laps, depending on the size of the track. “That’s your main event,” explains Kinser. “That’s the key to the whole thing, is at the end of the night to be sitting out there at the winner’s circle.”

PERSONAL LIFE

After living on the road for more than 30 years, you might think Kinser would have tired of traveling and want to settle down. But you’d be wrong. Kinser remarks, “I love traveling. When I was younger doing it, I probably bypassed everything there was. But as you get a little bit older you stop and see what all you’ve got. You don’t realize what all you got in the United States ’til you really get to looking at it. My wife, Dana, and I take a lot of time now to relax a little bit, stop and enjoy our country.”

In the winter months, when the World of Outlaws is taking a break, Kinser heads to Australia for more racing. “I’ve been over to Australia about 15 times. Our off-season is their season. They run the same type of racecars we do.”

The 2009-2010 off-season is a little different, though. Kinser is taking some time off to rest and recover from surgery to correct a neck injury incurred from a recent racing accident. He says it will be quite an adjustment from racing in Australia through their summer months. “I don’t know how well I’m going to handle winter at home and the cold weather,” he laughs.

Kinser’s wife and children are no strangers to the road, either. When they were very young, the children traveled everywhere with their parents. “Once they started school, it started getting really tough. Up until then, they were with me pretty well 100 percent of the time. And then as they got older and got into all their activities [Kinser’s son, Kraig, also races for WoO; his daughter was a cheerleader at Indiana University; and his youngest, Kurt, is a champion wrestler at Indiana University], it made it even tougher,” he reminisces.

Kinser can relate to the lives that professional truck drivers lead, and knows the dedication it takes to keep a family together while being gone so often. “We get home any chance we’ve got. If we’ve got a threeor four-day area, it doesn’t bother us to jump up and drive 30 hours home if we have to, turn around and drive another 30 hours back,” he says.

In fact, every member of Kinser’s crew holds his or her commercial driver’s license (CDL), including his daughter, who travels with him and his crew. Kinser chuckles, “That girl, she spent half her life in college getting degrees, and then she goes to the races, loves the races and won’t do anything else.” The drivers rotate, taking turns driving the trucks, transporting Kinser’s racecars across the nation.

LOOKING BACK ON A LEGACY

A lot has changed since Kinser began racing decades ago, including the fans. But he’s not one to complain. Some fans come and go, and “the same fans that hated you 15 years ago are your big fans now. They always enjoyed watching you race, they just got sick of you winning all the time.”

Although the fans’ favorites may change, their devotion to the sport does not. “They’re great. These fans are pretty knowledgeable and pretty serious. We’ve got hardcore race fans that travel far and wide. There are people that retire and they’ll follow the whole circuit,” Kinser says, but the best fans are those “who come and enjoy themselves and have a good time. That’s what they’re supposed to do.”

Looking back on his racing history, Kinser says he wouldn’t change a thing. “I wanted to race when I was a kid. I wanted to race as a hobby and figured I was going to work a 40-hour job and maybe get to race on the weekends as a hobby,” he recalls. “I never dreamed it would be anything like this.”

More often than not, athletes only dream of winning a championship. Some lucky ones manage to make it happen, whether it be the Super Bowl, the World Series, the U.S. Open, or another big-name title. A select few are fortunate enough to win on more than one occasion and are idolized by fans and sportscasters alike. Winning 20 championships in a single sport may seem impossible, but Steve Kinser has proved with his Quaker State sprint car that it can be done. Through countless titles and unprecedented records, Steve Kinser’s record confirms he truly is “the king.”