The WoO in those days rain with or without wings depending on the promoter’s choice. The Colorado race was run without wings.
As a photographer I encountered Steve Kinser on many other occasions. Santa Fe Raceway in Illinois, Butler Motor Speedway in Michigan, Hales Corners and Cedar Lake Raceways in Wisconsin. Of course Knoxville Raceway in Iowa and Eldora in Ohio and many others are also on my list. Steve won the majority of all the races I saw him compete in.
Steve also beat the greatest drivers of NASCAR, Indy Car Racing and road racing when he came home first in an IROC race at Talladega.
Please note as is often the case with an attempt to copy and past from another website, this one made for incorrect paragraph breaks. Hopefully you can follow this. It is loaded with info and it came from TrueSpeedCommunications
Icon. Champion. Winner. Motivator. Fierce competitor. Friend. Family man. Being characterized by any one of those descriptors would make most people proud, but to be defined by all of them would certainly result in royalty status.
That’s precisely the altitude from which Steve Kinser presides. Kinser is a legend in motorsports. Tabbed “The King of the Outlaws,” the 20-time World of Outlaws (WoO) champion has been described as the best there ever has been racing on dirt ovals. His results back up those claims. More than 800 career victories during his illustrious career earned him those accolades. High praise for a man who started out as a Southern Indiana boy simply wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a racer. Ultimately, his dream became reality
Today, 34 seasons after competing in the first-ever WoO race in 1978, the 57-year-old still regularly intimidates the competition he battles on dirt tracks across the country. The same man still thrills the hundreds of thousands of fans who come out to see him perform his magic. The results of the 2011 WoO season proved “The King” still has plenty of magic up his sleeve. In his second season driving for Tony Stewart Racing (TSR), the Bloomington, Ind., native won three of the first four races behind the wheel of the No. 11 Bass Pro Shops/J.D. Byrider Chevy owned by reigning and three-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series champion and fellow Hoosier Tony
Stewart. Kinser tied for a series-best nine WoO A-Feature victories in 2011 and finished third in the championship standings. Kinser will be chasing his 21st WoO title in 2012
There is great pride being from Indiana, and that dignity starts early in life. The third child of parents Bob and Cora Kinser grew up watching his father manhandle open-wheel cars around dirt tracks throughout his home state. His passion for racing matched that of his father.
Toughness has always been part of Kinser’s DNA, surfacing early in his competitive days. He grew up active in athletics and flourished in the sport of wrestling. His days at Bloomington High School included consecutive trips to the Indiana High School
Wrestling State Championships. A second-place finish his junior year was followed by his being crowned champion of the 132- pound class as a senior.
Following high school glory, he traded in his wrestling singlet for a helmet and driver’s uniform and began racing at the same venues where his dad learned the craft. Like his father, he also earned a living bricklaying. His days were filled with hard labor on job sites and weekends were filled with slinging dirt and grit at the track.
The King’s ascent to greatness began when America was celebrating its bicentennial. Kinser spent the 1976 season competing primarily on weekends at Indiana dirt ovals. He won 17 times, beginning with his first triumph on June 11, 1976, at his hometown track, Bloomington Speedway. With a year of competition under his belt, Kinser took on a much more aggressive schedule beginning with Florida races in February 1977. His victory total was five, including two at Bloomington, but the experience he earned positioned him perfectly for what was to come next. Timing is everything, and Ted Johnson’s vision of creating a Sprint car carnival that traveled coast-to-coast was a perfect opportunity for the talented driver. After accepting a ride in his distant cousin Karl’s potent machine, he gave up his days of laying bricks and traveled across the country racing in 1978, following Johnson’s band of Outlaws from venue to venue.
Kinser totaled 39 wins that season and quickly became a star in the sport. His 1978 WoO title began a championship run that included the first three World of Outlaws crowns. It was just the start and, as he continued his dominance of the Outlaws, he joined some of the sport’s greats by adding his name to the list of winners of the biggest races. His Knoxville (Iowa) Nationalstriumphs to start the 1980s only fueled a budding rivalry with Sammy Swindell and Doug Wolfgang. “The Big Three” dominated the sport throughout the decade with Kinser leading the way.
During the 1980s, Kinser’s status continued to evolve as evidenced by his record-setting 1987 campaign. That season, he won 56 short-track races, with 46 them being WoO A-Features, including 24 of the last 26. In total, he won seven WoO championships, six Knoxville (Iowa) Nationals, six Gold Cup Race of Champions victories and a pair of Kings Royal triumphs at Eldora Speedway from 1980 to 1988.
After a season of competing with the United Sprint Association in 1989, “The King” returned to the Outlaws in 1990 and regained his stronghold on the sport. While his rivals battled both injury (Wolfgang) and other motorsports career paths (Swindell), Kinser stayed the course and continued his domination.
His success didn’t go unnoticed by his peers. An invitation to compete in 1994 International Race of Champions (IROC) series validated his place in the motorsports hierarchy during the 1994 season. While he continued to set the pace in World of Outlaws action, he also showed his talent versus some of the sport’s elite drivers. In only his third start with the series, he was victorious at Talladega Superspeedway. That victory not only authenticated his abilities, but it also served as a victory for all short-track racing competitors.
Later that season, he was once again crowned Knoxville Nationals champion, putting him well on his way to WoO title number 14. It was during the Outlaws’ annual fall swing through California when the news that many had expected finally broke. Kinser was headed to NASCAR’s top division after signing a three-year contract with King Racing.
He closed out the Outlaw campaign with another championship and took the well wishes from his droves of fans into an offseason that had him rededicating himself to becoming a full-time stock car driver. Countless hours of studying and testing were spent in an effort to get up to speed for a NASCAR career that would begin with the 1995 Daytona 500.
Unfortunately, as good as his timing was in 1978 with the Outlaws, the same couldn’t be said in 1995 for Kinser in NASCAR. Too many variables weren’t meshing and his move to the Sprint Cup Series (then known as Winston Cup) clearly wasn’t going in the direction he had hoped. After only seven races, concluding with the First Union 400 on April 9 at North Wilkesboro (N.C.)Speedway, he made the decision to return to Sprint car racing.Kinser moved quickly and built a team to rejoin the World of Outlaws thanks to his relationship with Quaker State.
Thirty-three days after officially leaving NASCAR, he and his team, led by Scott Gerkin, were back competing with the Outlaws at the Action Track in Terre Haute, Ind. His first WoO victory as an owner-driver came in his seventh race and, later that summer, he made it clear he was back on top by scoring the $100,000-to-win Historical Big One and, eight days later, racing from his 14th starting position to win his fifth consecutive Knoxville Nationals. In all, he won 18 WoO features during the 1995 season. Kinser continued his winning ways with the Outlaws over the next two seasons, capturing 15 feature events and finishing fourth and third, respectively, in the championship standings. The highlight of 1997 didn’t come with the Outlaws for Kinser. It was during the month of May, when he realized his dream of qualifying for and then competing in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” He qualified 20 for the 81st Indianapolis 500 and finished 14th.
In 1998, he earned his first WoO championship as a team owner and 15h as a driver. He finished third in 1999 before winning
another WoO title in 2000.
During the 2002 season, Kinser earned his 12th Knoxville Nationals title and started another Kinseresque WoO title run by winning 20 A-Features. The run included three more championships and numerous additions to the record books along the way, including his 500th career WoO A-Feature win in March 2004 at Houston Raceway Park.
He competed in three consecutive IROC series from 2003 to 2005. His 2005 WoO championship was his 20thand capped a season that saw him pick up his 10th Eagle (Neb.) Nationals, sixth Kings Royal and 12th Gold Cup Race of Champions
His most recent seasons would be considered successful by most drivers, but not for Kinser. Six wins with the National Sprint Tour in 2006 were followed by a 10-win WoO season in 2007, which included his triumph in the 40th anniversary Don MartinMemorial at Lernerville (Pa.) Speedway. In 2008, he finished third in the WoO championship standings, came home fifth in 2009 and was third in 2010. Back and neck pain that Kinser believes originated from an IROC crash in 2005 continued to bother the champion in recent seasons. After offseason surgery in December 2009, Kinser has felt better than ever and consecutive championship-contending seasons with TSR only continued to build the legacy of “The King of the Outlaws.” Throughout his years behind the wheel and all the accomplishments he’s been part of, it’s still his family that brings him the most joy. His wife Dana has been his life partner and has been by his side through it all, but she spent most of the 2011 season recovering from heart surgery. Kinser is anxious to have her back by his side this season. They have raised three children together. Whether it was at their Bloomington home or the countless miles they spent traveling together going from race to race, they have always been a close-knit unit. The Kinser children all grew up experiencing the excitement of the racing lifestyle. Their daughter, Stevie, was always by Dad’s side from track to track and, ultimately, graduated from Indiana University. She has been an invaluable part of Steve Kinser
Racing (SKR) through years and remains in the family business today. In 2011, Kinser welcomed his first granddaughter, Haylee, to the family and held his daughter’s first baby proudly in a couple of victory lane photos last season.
Son Kraig followed his father into Sprint car racing and earned World of Outlaws Rookie of the Year honors in 2004. It was Kraig who provided his father with one of his most cherished moments in racing when he won the Knoxville Nationals in 2005. The 20- year-old joined his father to make up the only father-son duo to win the sport’s most prestigious event. In 2012, Kraig Kinser will be competing in his seventh season on the Outlaw circuit.
The Kinsers’ youngest son, Kurt, also followed his father’s path to success. Kurt repeated his dad’s high school wrestling glory by winning the Indiana state championship his senior season after, ironically, finishing second as a junior. Kurt recently completed his career as a scholarship wrestler for Indiana University.
Despite the several hundred pictures I have made of Steve Kinser in action (1978-2000), none remain, so I include these images from Google Photos.
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