When Kennington first started racing stock cars on Saturday nights at his local Canadian short tracks, he counted Earl Ross as one of his early mentors.
Ross holds a special place in the history of NASCAR and Canada – his win in 1974 at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway in a car fielded by Junior Johnson marks the only time a Canadian-born driver has won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
“We had a great time with them boys,” Johnson said. “They were very intelligent. It was hard to believe they had learned as much as they did about the sport and NASCAR. Most of the guys that worked on the car were as good as the guys I had working on the cars. We were trying to teach them, and we learned a lot from them because they had studied the sport so much.”
Johnson, who won 50 races as a driver and six championships as a car owner, was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame earlier this year.
For Kennington, the winning has come easy. It’s the championship that eluded him over his 17-year career stretching back to his days in the former CASCAR series. Most recently, he posted runner-up finishes in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series in 2007 and ’09, and a third in 2008.
“That’s racing,” Kennington said. “For me, it just gave me that much more drive and determination. I just always moved on to the next season.”
Now he’ll never have to think about ‘what might have been.’
“It’s an honor you’ll never forget,” Johnson said. “You’ll think about it the rest of your life, about how you’ve been able to become the best out there at any given time. If you don’t, you’re going to leave something out of your racing career the rest of your life.
“Winning and being a champion is what it’s all about.”
