Kenny Irwin Jr. - Lost Too Soon

Two For Two: Turn 3 Strikes Again

For the second time in eight weeks Turn 3 at the New Hampshire International Speedway has claimed another victim. Friday morning, July 7, 2000, Kenny Irwin Jr. climbed into his number 42 Team SABCO - owned BellSouth - sponsored Chevrolet Monte Carlo and went out on to the race track for friday morning practice. He did not know that he would not get back in for Friday's qualifing round in the afternoon.

Born August 5, 1969 Kenny (left) was born to race. See Kenny grew up in the wheat fields near Indianapolis, Indiana and just like his friend and fellow Indiana native Jeff Gordon, Kenny began to race open-wheel cars. He enjoyed immediate success in open-wheel cars and moved on to USAC National Midget Series. Irwin was dominant during five seasons in that series, as he got eight wins, 20 second-place finishes, 59 top-5s and 87 top-10s in only 123 starts. He also won the 1996 Midget Series championship. At the same period in time Kenny was racing in the Stoops Freightliner USAC Sprint Car Series and won that series' Rookie of the Year award in 1993, winning seven races in the process. A year later, he won the same award in the USAC Silver Crown Series winning six times in that series. In that series is where the rivalry between himself and fellow Winston Cup driver Tony Stewart began. In 1996 Kenny made the leap onto the NASCAR circuit and made his Craftsman Truck Series debut, won the pole at the Richmond International Raceway in just his second start. He scored a full-time ride for 1997 in the Truck series with Jim Herrick's Liberty Racing Team and won two races for that team at Homestead and Texas. He was named Rookie of the Year in that series as well. The major career move came later that year.

Prominent Winston Cup car owner Robert Yates made the decision in Septemer on 1997 to replace Ernie Irvan with Kenny as the driver of the legendary number 28 Texaco Havoline car for the 1998 season. In four Winston Cup starts in 1997 in the 27 car fielded for Kenny his best showing was at the Richmond International Raceway where he qualified on the outside pole (2nd) and finished 8th. This race truly showed off Kenny's great potental. Once in the seat of the 28 car in 1998 Kenny did not enjoy the same kind of success that he had in the past. Kenny (pic - left; seen with then teammate Dale Jarrett) did post one top 5 and four top 10's in his rookie campaign and of course as you may have guessed won the Rookie of the Year award his first season in Winston Cup. Many rumors were around that Kenny may not return to ride for the 1999 season but he was in the 28 car at Daytona of 1999. In that race Kenny scored his best career Winston Cup finish, third, behind only Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt. Many tought that Kenny would finally grow into the next rising star of NASCAR that everyone projected him to be as he finished sixth the next week at Rockingham. However Kenny could only score one other top 5 and two other top 10's the rest of 1999. Yates had seen enough and named veteran Ricky Rudd to take over the ride in 2000.

In November of 1999 Kenny agreed to sign on with SABCO Racing to drive the number 42 BellSouth car in the 2000 season replacing the departing Joe Nemechek. During 2000, Kenny drove to a season best finish of fourth at Talladega and that was his only top 5 and only top 10. On that fateful Friday morning Kenny was practicing before qualifing for that Sunday's thatlook.com 300, which would have been his 88th career Winston Cup start, when it took a turn for the worse. At about 11:23 a.m. Kenny went into Turn 3 when his car went head on into the outside retaining wall at about 170 mph and the car turned on the driver's side as it skidded around to Turn 4 before coming to a rest on its roof. As you may recall this is the same turn in which Adam Petty also crashed and died in a similar accident just eight weeks to the day before. This happened less than 10 minutes into the practice session. Kenny was extricated from the car and flown to the infield care center and from there a little over 30 minutes later he was flown to Concord Regional Hospital where here was pronounced dead from "multiple injuries."

Kenny is survived by his parents and three sisters. My thoughts and prayers are with the Irwin family in their time of bereavement, I hope that yours are as well.

Once again Kenny Irwin Jr. dead at the age of 30.

August 5, 1969 - July 7, 2000

This is Kenny's 2000 Winston Cup Car & the car that he was driving at the time of the accident.

For more information about Kenny's passing please visit NASCAR Online or visit my page with some of the responses made by those around the sport at Kenny's Responses.

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