(Bill W) December 23, 2012 – In sprint car racing, your success is built in the offseason. No one knows that better than driver Kerry Madsen and the Keneric Racing #29 team. They are working as hard as ever preparing for the 2013 World of Outlaws campaign. The St. Mary’s, New South Wales, Australia driver has a very limited schedule planned “Down Under” this winter. Though fans in his homeland may be disappointed, the team feels the time will be well spent preparing for a grueling 90-race schedule with the Outlaws.
Keneric Racing has formed a potent team entering the New Year. Already under their belts are five wins with the World of Outlaws in 2012, including the Brady Doty Classic. “We did a lot of good things this year,” says Kerry. “I say this a lot, but we’re still such a young team. We’ve got some great people working for us in Shane (Bowers) and Rob (Hart). We had a winning season. We had five good wins, and we had a lot of strong runs in between. That’s what we wanted to do this year.”
Not much will change entering 2013, but the team is hoping for a few more wins. Consistency should help them towards that. “Sure we felt we should have done more, but so does every race team,” says Kerry of 2012. “Saying that, we are really building towards next year. Everything will be the same as far as personnel, our engine program and the car program. The tires will be changing (Hoosier), but I’m not too concerned about it. We’ll head down to Florida in early February to work on that.”
Right now, much work is being done in and on the team’s shop. In addition, there is much to do to prepare for a schedule approaching 100 events. “As a group, we’re really excited about 2013,” says Kerry. “We can’t wait. We’re progressing on our shop in Knoxville right now. We’re updating it, and want to make it nice for our sponsors and the guys working in it. We have some exciting things going on.”
With so much work to be done, Kerry’s usual busy racing schedule in Australia will be pulled back. “We’re concentrating on the Outlaws in 2013, so my schedule in Australia will be really limited,” he shares. “As it stands now, I’ll just be there for two weekends…the Australian title in January and the Krikke Boys race in March. I did say to myself when I saw the white stuff on the ground here again, ‘I need to get back down there and do some more racing next year!’ We just have too much to get done this year, with the shop and administratively. That will help us make gains down the road.”
Kerry has strong backing with his owners, Bob and Pete Gavranich. All eyes are on the events transpiring at Volusia Speedway Park in Florida in February. “Bob and Pete are putting everything behind us to make this a strong organization and we’ll be coming out swinging in 2013,” says Kerry. “We’ll be ready to start in Florida at Volusia in February with the test day and the All Stars before the Outlaw season starts. We want to get as much spec time as we can on the new tire. Not so much that, as we want to get prepared. It’s kind of like the pre-season games in football. We’re working on a lot of internal things leading up to that, so we’re looking for a strong start.”
The ambitious schedule with the Outlaws really gets ramped up when the series heads west in March. “It’s a 90 race schedule, so we’re not too concerned about doing too much too early,” says Kerry. “It’s kind of like the Outlaw schedule of old really. It looks exciting. It’s going to be a lot of fun. If you’re running the World of Outlaws, that’s the way you want the schedule. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s not supposed to be easy. It’s really exciting for everyone. To me, it shows that the powers that be are getting on the same page, and that’s good for the sport.”
Follow Kerry Madsen on his Website and on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter!
Follow Kerry Madsen at his website located at www.KenericRacing.com! Also keep up with him on Facebook and Twitter (which also can be accessed at the website) at the following links…
Facebook link = http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Official-Fan-Page-for-Kerry-Madsen/101145169933686
Twitter link = http://twitter.com/#!/kmr29
Kerry’s Releases
To receive Kerry’s Releases, send an e-mail to sprntcar@hotmail.com with “Madsen” in the subject line!
The Team
Kerry Madsen (KMR / Keneric Racing), Bob & Peter Gavranich (Keneric Racing), Earthex, Morrison Motors, KPC Chassis.
Attached: Kerry celebrates his win at the Brad Doty Classic in July (Mike Campbell Photo)
Article Credit: Bill Wright