Swindell, Wolfgang Challenge Kinser at Ascot

The full-tour presence of Sammy Swindell of Bartlett, Tenn., and Doug Wolfgang of Sioux Falls, S.D., along with defending World of Outlaws champion Steve Kinser of Bloomington, Ind., puts sprint car racing’s “big three” in the Midwinter Outlaw Championships for the first time at Ascot Park on Feb. 19-20.

Wolfgang, a four-time winner of the U.S. nationals at Knoxville, Iowa,is rejoining the Outlaws group after spending most of the past four years on the Pennsylvania sprint car circuit. He will be driving for well known car owner Gary Stanton, a former Arizona chassis builder now living in Kentucky.

Swindell, the only other driver besides eight-time champion Kinser ever to win the World of Outlaws season championship, has signed to drive the house car of the Challenger Chassis Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. With Wolfgang also driving a Challenger, the pair will be trying to prevent the factory-sponsored Gambler of Kinser from monopolizing the winner’s circle in winged sprint car racing as he did last year.

In his march to an eighth Outlaws championship, Kinser scored 56 victories, breaking Wolfgang’s mark of 55 set in 1985, Kinser collected 46 of his wins in Outlaw competition. He also won 12 straight at one point in the season, scored a record 11,006 points and pocketed $375,290. All are all-time records for sprint car racing.

Included in Kinser’s spree was his first triumph in the Pacific Coast Nationals at Ascot last October. The win, one of the few major events to escape him, also enabled him to join the select group--Swindell and Ron Shuman--to have won the triple crown of sprint car racing made up of Knoxville and the Western World championships at Phoenix. However, Kinser is the only one to do it in the same season.

Wolfgang is the only one of the trio without a winged victory at Ascot. Swindell grabbed the Outlaw’s initial program at Ascot in September of 1985 and then came back to take the top money in the midwinter program in 1986.

Brad Doty of Fredricksburg, Ohio, has the other two winged victories, taking the 1986 Pacific Coast Nationals and then the 1987 Midwinter. Doty and car owner Les Kepler will be on hand with a new sponsor and a new Lightning chassis car.

Doty was the most consistant contestant on the 1987 Outlaw circuit. He finished all 69 races last year and was second to Kinser in the standings.