Known as “The Pup” throughout his days racing sprint cars, Indiana wheelman Kevin Huntley died unexpectedly during the night (Jan. 8). He was 56 years old.
A native of Bloomington, Ind., Huntley was best known as a winged sprint car racer, but also was a frequent competitor in non-winged sprint cars.
Huntley won 44 All Star Circuit of Champions features during his career, and that places him ninth on the series’ all-time winners list. Huntley is also a two-time All Star champion, having won the title in 1992 and ’93. He tied for the 1993 championship with Frankie Kerr..
Huntley also won six USAC features, including claiming the $50,000 Mopar Thunder top prize at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway in 2004. Five of Huntley’s USAC triumphs, including one in a Silver Crown car, came at Eldora.
Huntley made his sprint car debut at Bloomington Speedway in 1984 and he was a regular competitor through the 2008 season.
Still, he continued to race sparingly, and won a 305 sprint car feature at Bloomington in 2015. He promptly retired in victory lane at the same track where his career began.
Huntley explained his popular nickname, which he carried throughout his career in the following way, “They had several names for me, but that was the only one that could be said in public.”
Huntley finished third in the All Star standings in 1991 and made it to the top the following season, beating Kerr for the title by a mere four points. Huntley won 14 features and the Ohio Speedweek title en route to the championship.
The following year (1993), Kerr led Huntley by 21 points entering the All Star finale at Eldora.
Kerr dropped out two laps in the race and Huntley won the feature, creating a tie for the title.
“I don’t know if I knew where I needed to finish,” Huntley said, “but I passed Danny Smith to take the lead and the yellow came out. I have replayed that race in my head a million times. I still remember running those laps like it was yesterday. I should have beat him. I just got a little overzealous. I probably knew if I won, I would win the points, and I probably let that get to me a little bit.”
While Eldora was kind to Huntley, his first visit to the half-mile track didn’t go well. Huntley told the story to Sprint Car & Midget Magazine in 2020.
“When I went to Eldora at the end of 1986, I had never been on anything bigger than a quarter-mile. But we were fast. I actually broke the track record that day, until Bobby Allen went out and re-broke it,” Huntley noted. “Then I busted my ass coming out of turn four. I flipped all the way down the front straightaway. It tore the seat out of the car and I was upside down or on my side, and I took the seat belt off and I fell out with the seat.
“I destroyed my race car and it was all I had. It hurt.”
Away from the track, Huntley established a successful excavating business and, more recently, Green Earth, a composting and recycling company.