Bloomington, Ind.—April 7, 2013— After a single race weekend before Easter, Kraig Kinser was really looking forward to getting back on the track for a pair of races at Antioch Speedway and Calistoga Speedway as the World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series continued their West Coast Swing in California this weekend. Mother Nature had other ideas though, dumping quite a bit of rain on Northern California, which forced the cancellation of the Calistoga event and nearly put the Antioch race in jeopardy. The track crew at Antioch spent all of race day working the track after a significant amount of rain fell the day before the race and was able to get the track in racing condition by race time on Friday, April 5.
Kinser would open the night by qualifying a very solid fifth in the Casey’s General Store/Mesilla Valley Transportation Maxim with a stout 35-car field in attendance at the high-banked, three-eighths-mile. The third-generation driver would line up third in the first eight-lap heat race and finished fifth to earn a spot in the 30-lap main event. He rolled off the grid on the inside of the sixth row for the A-Feature and would cross the finish line in 14th, which helped him move up two spots to ninth in the World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series standings.
The 30-lap main event went green-to-checkers without a caution on a very fast surface that was challenging to pass on. Kinser dropped two positions at the start and ran in that spot for the first half of the race. He got passed on lap-18 and would remain in 14th for the remainder of the contest.
“It was definitely tough to pass out there,” said Kinser. “That was one of those nights where you try to maintain and not fall out of line. We are certainly working hard at it and still have a few things we need to get better on. We qualified well, but we have to start getting in the dash, because it is so important nowadays to start at the front in the feature. We’ll keep at it and we have some tracks we know pretty well coming up when we get back to the Midwest.”
Following the cancellation of the Saturday, April 6 event at Calistoga Speedway, which will not be made up, the World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series wraps up the West Coast Swing next weekend with a visit to Kings Speedway in Hanford, Calif., on Friday, April 12 and Perris Auto Speedway on Saturday, April 13.
“We were really looking forward to seeing what they had done to Calistoga,” he noted. “Rainout are tough anytime, but especially when you are coming off a weekend where you just had one race. We’re looking forward to next weekend and getting a pair of shows in and then we have the mid-week race at El Paso and then Paducah (International Raceway in Kentucky) and Haubstadt (Tri-State Speedway in Indiana), so that will be a good, busy week for us.”
With 12 races completed in 2013, Kinser is ninth in the World of Outlaws STP Sprint Car Series championship standings. He has five top-10 finishes, including a season-best third-place showing at Volusia Speedway Park in Florida during the UNOH DIRTcar Nationals in February. In time trials this season, the native of Bloomington, Ind., has qualified among the top-10 seven times.
Kraig Kinser Racing would like to thank Casey’s General Stores, Mesilla Valley Transportation, Maxim, Aerodine Composites, Sander Engineering, Integra Shocks, All Star Performance, FK Rod Ends, Brown & Miller Racing Solutions, Bell, KSE Racing Products, ButlerBuilt, Schoenfeld Headers, Donovan Engineering, Fel-Pro, Brodix, Wilwood, Dyer’s, Barnes Systems, Ringer Gloves, Jakes Custom Golf Carts, and Ben Cook Racing Limited for their continued support.
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- Admin Account on Apr 08, 2013
- Article Date: 4/7/2013 by Kraig Kinser Racing PR