‘Now, I Get to Race’ : Foothill’s Kinder, 16, Takes Wheel for Real Saturday in Bakersfield

At some point Saturday night, 16-year-old John Kinder hopes his stock car apprenticeship will end. Then, he’ll cease to be a novelty, a boy racing against men. He’ll be just one of the guys.

After two previous trial runs--races in which his main objective was simply to learn, not contend--Kinder will be racing for real Saturday night on the half-mile paved oval at Bakersfield’s Mesa Marin Speedway.

The race, Kinder’s third as a stock-car racer, figures to be another step on the way to a career as a professional NASCAR driver.

For his 10th birthday, Kinder went to kart racing school. By the time he turned 11, he was experienced enough to begin racing on his own. At 12, he was winning local races and traveling to the Grand Nationals in Richland, Wash. By age 15, he had won three national championships and it was time to move up in class.

Next stop, Kinder and his father Jim decided, was NASCAR and late-model stock cars. So Kinder attended Skip Barber’s stock car racing school in Las Vegas and then to the Charlotte Motor Speedway school in North Carolina.

In his first two starts at Mesa Marin, he began at the back of the pack, stayed there to observe and learn, then moved up in the latter stages.

But Saturday’s race will be different.

“Now, I get to race,” said Kinder, who will be a senior at Foothill High School this fall. “It’s hard to say that I’m just going to take it easy. I’m excited because I haven’t done this before. This is with a different crowd.”

Heads turned when Kinder and his crew of five, which includes his father, first pulled up in Bakersfield this year. A suspicious NASCAR official told Kinder to “keep his nose clean.” Kinder took that to mean “stay out of the way and let the men race.”

But it wasn’t anything Jim Kinder hadn’t planned in the first place. His son’s racing has always been a slow, steady lesson in conservative development.

“Learn it before you do it,” rather than “Just do it” has been the Kinders’ motto.

“I’ve learned a lot of respect for the guys going fast,” John said. “I’ve been told to keep my nose clean and make a pass if I can make it. But basically, I’ve just been learning.”

In his past two races, Kinder qualified but then asked to start in the back of the pack to avoid trouble. In his first race, he started 27th and finished 16th. In his second, he started 25th and was 15th at the finish.

In Saturday night’s 75-lap race, he’ll start wherever he qualifies. And he’ll race as hard as the rest of the field. There will be no holding back.

“I’m trying to keep up with the front pack,” he said. “I’m looking for a top 10 finish, and finish is the underlined word there.”

Since his first NASCAR race, he has come to be something of a fixture at Mesa Marin. Last time out, he was interviewed by the track’s public address announcer, which the Kinders think helped land a sponsorship offer from a hotel chain.

Sixteen-year-old stock car racers might not rate a second glance in North Carolina, where next to college basketball, the sport is king. But in Southern California, Kinder finds he’s a novelty.

Even among the “local heroes,” as Kinder calls the men who race at Mesa Marin, there is a great deal of attention.

“Some look at me and say, ‘I wish I would have started racing when I was 16,’ ” Kinder said. “I say, ‘I wish I started when I was 8 (the youngest you can race go-carts).’ ”

Classmates at Foothill “think it’s great,” Kinder said. “Most of the guys I hang around with don’t know what they want to do in 10 years. Well, I know what I want to do.”

Sometimes his friends get carried away, asking Kinder to drive fast when he’s on the streets. But he knows better. “There’s a time and a place for everything,” he said.

Kinder said he has learned responsibility from racing. Moreover, Jim Kinder said he can continue to race only as long as he continues to carry at least a 3.0 grade-point average, which is right where he is.

School remains an important part of John’s life.

“It’s my career goal (to race),” he said, “but I also want to attend college.”