The King Of Outlaws returns for a 31st season on the short tracks

Steve Kinser returns for his 31st straight season on America's short tracks. AP Tim Tuttle's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Tim. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Steve Kinser will be in his renowned No. 11 for the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series' opener Friday in Barberville, Fla., the 31st straight season he's saddled up for a national tour running for a championship on America's short tracks. At 54, Kinser isn't just hanging on, either.

Kinser started slowly in 2008 before a strong second half carried him to third in the World of Outlaws championship. He won seven features and had 33 top-fives in 80 races.

"The first half of last year, we just ran terrible," Kinser said. "We just got behind on the motor and chassis, really the whole race team, and it took us a while to fix it. When you're running good, you don't change things until somebody starts beating you. Then you got to go work and sometimes you go backward before you go forward."

Kinser knows all about running good in the World of Outlaws. He has competed in 28 and has 20 championships and 550 feature wins, with his last World of Outlaws title coming in 2005, when he was 51. He's the Richard Petty of winged Sprint Cars -- fans and foes call him King of the Outlaws.

He hasn't always been happy with the organizers of the World of Outlaws. In 2006 he left to drive in a start-up rival, the National Sprint Tour. When the NST folded after one season, Kinser returned to the WoO.

The brief civil war split the top winged Sprint Car drivers into two groups. Donny Schatz won the World of Outlaws title in 2006. With drivers like Danny Lasoski (who won the rival series) and Kinser in the NST, there were critics who wondered if Schatz could win another championship in a reunited field.

Schatz has silenced them, winning the past two years for three in a row. Driving for Tony Stewart Racing, Schatz won 18 features last season.

Kinser says he's been playing catch-up and figures he's ready to challenge Schatz for the championship. "He's been the driver to beat since we had that National Sprint Tour," Kinser said. "We got a little behind. We ran really good at the end of last year and we ran well in Australia [this winter]. Physically, I'm not what I was, but I think I can still win a lot of races and win championships. If I didn't think I could, I wouldn't be out here now."

In Australia, Kinser raced five races, winning twice, including out-dueling Schatz at Parramatta City Raceway in a $50,000 to win race. "There's a lot of good competition there," Kinser said. "We were able to get five races under our belt and it definitely doesn't hurt to do that."

The World of Outlaws is a grueling, barnstorming coast-to-coast series with a couple of stops in Canada. There are 84 events scheduled this year, and runs from this weekend's three-day event at Volusia Speedway Park to Nov. 7 at Lowe's Motor Speedway's dirt track in North Carolina.

Kinser was an original WoO, winning the inaugural season of 1978. The series was founded by Ted Johnson, who sold it to the World Racing Group in 2004.

Like Petty, Kinser is the son of a driver with distinguished credentials. His father, Bob, had 400 feature wins and 29 track and racing association championships in a 40-year career. He's a member of the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Iowa, class of 1999. Steve was inducted into the same HoF in 2005.

"I always loved racing," Steve Kinser said. "I grew up with it. My father was one of the better racers in the Midwest."

Raised in Bloomington, Ind., where he still lives, Kinser was the state high school wrestling champion at 132 pounds in 1972. His son, Kurt, was state champion at 152 pounds at the same school, Bloomington South, in 2006 and is a top-rated collegian at Indiana University who was an NCAA qualifier as a redshirt freshman last year.

Steve Kinser began driving for cousin Karl Kinser's team in 1976 and has at least six victories in every season. He drove for the team through the 1994 season, including one in the United Sprint Association in 1989. It was, like the later National Sprint Tour, formed as a rival to the WoO and folded after one year. Kinser won that title too and it was the only season from 1983 to 1994 that he wasn't the WoO champion.

Kinser's victory in an International Race of Champions race at Talladega in 1994 put him on NASCAR's radar and Sprint Cup team owner Kenny Bernstein signed him for 1995. Kinser started slowly, as should have been expected for a 40-year-old making the transition from 1,200-pound, 800-horsepower Sprint cars to 3,500-pound stock cars, and was released after five races.

At least Bernstein's sponsor, Quaker State, liked Kinser. He convinced the company to back him in an immediate return to the WoO with his own team and they remain his primary sponsor.

Kinser's team includes wife Dana and daughter Stevie. Son Kraig drives for Stewart, giving them lots of quality time on the road together.

"I enjoy traveling and we have a lot of great friends across the US that we get to see," Kinser said. "I probably enjoy that as much as anything. My only regret is I don't get to see my younger boy [Kurt] wrestle as much as I'd like."

With no plans to quit, Kinser is thinking more about fighting Schatz for the championship than he is retirement.

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to race through 2011," he said. "I'll see what's going on after that."