Steve Kinser Looks To Make It Eight In A Row At Hollywood Hills Speedway
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Oct 10, 2008
stevekinser.com
Seven times the checkered flag has flown over an Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series event at Hollywood Hills Speedway, and seven times Steve Kinser has found himself in Victory Lane. In those events, he has led 187 of the 205 laps of feature racing competition, which came during the 2002 and 2003 seasons.
The 20-time series champion will look to extend that streak this weekend as the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series returns to the 3/8-mile in San Felipe Pueblo, New Mexico for the first time since 2003 on Saturday, October 11 and Sunday, October 12 for two full nights of racing.
“I really don’t what’s made us so fast there,” said the native of Bloomington, Indiana with a smile. “I just hope we are that fast when we go back. I’ve always have had some good luck there. I haven’t run there a lot, just a few times, but I have always gotten around there good. Hopefully it’s the same when we go back.”
Kinser has a remarkable track record in the state of New Mexico, winning 11 of the 15 races in the state dating back to 1978. He has finished in the Top-10 in all but one of those starts. He won for the first time in the state back in 1978, in a non-wing event at Speedway Park in Albuquerque. This season, he has won six times aboard the Q Oil Maxim, on a variety of tracks, ranging from the largest track on the 2008 schedule, the sprawling 5/8-mile at Rolling Wheels Raceway Park in New York to the tight high-banked 1/3-mile bullring at Charter Raceway Park in Wisconsin.
“We try to win every night and treat each race the same way,” he noted. “It doesn’t always work out that way, but we’re in ok shape. We’ll see what happens over there this weekend.”
Kinser heads to Hollywood Hills Speedway with some meticulous notes on the track, and is anxious to see what the racing surface will have in store for two nights of racing. He has won the Crane Cams Dash at the track four times and has started on the front two rows in every feature event he has competed in at the track. Four times in the seven previous races at the track for the World of Outlaws, he has led every lap of the feature event from the drop of the green flag, in both preliminary and A-Feature events.
“It’s a little bit different of a track,” explained the winningest driver in World of Outlaws history. “I have been able to get around the bottom of it pretty well. We’ll see what kind of track they give us this time and what happens.”
With warm temperatures during the day and cool weather in the evenings in the New Mexico desert, the track at Hollywood Hills will continuously change each time that the competitors take to it and that is one of the challenges that Kinser enjoys most about sprint car racing. That also is where his 30-plus years of experience and vast knowledge come into play.
“Everything affects the set-up of the car and that is the thing about dirt track racing,” he shared. “You can go there one time and come back with a different set-up under it and everything changes. The air is always a little different and you have to have the fuel system a little different. It takes a combination of things to win and you have to be right to win a race.”
Kinser has won six times this season and is among the Top-Five in laps led and fast time honors in qualifying. He also is tied for the lead in wins in the Crane Cams Dash and pole positions with six. He has been very consistent over the second half of the season and has been in the Top-Five and battling for wins on most nights. He has finished in the Top-10 in 23 of the last 25 events, as the season winds down.
“It has been a very competitive season, with a lot of different winners,” noted Kinser. “That’s the way it’s been for the last few years and it’s just going to keep getting tougher.”
Kinser enters this weekend’s pair of events at Hollywood Hills Speedway fourth in the World of Outlaws championship standings, just eight markers behind Joey Saldana who is in third. He has racked up 42 Top-10 finishes this season, with 28 of those being Top-Five performance. With seven races remaining in 2008, he looks to add to his record win total, which currently is at 549 for his career in A-Feature events.
“We just need to win a few more races,” he said. “We were really looking forward to Williams Grove (Speedway- National Open) and got rained out. Winning races will make it a good end to the year.”
