What is it the old adventurer said as he embarked on a new phase in life?

“As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination.”

Might as well have been Kevin Thomas Jr., if only for two small things.

One: It took Junior two days to move on. And two: He knew exactly where he was going.

“Oh yeah, I was just ready to go,” said Thomas Jr. “I hated to leave my friends behind, but this is what I want to do for a living.”

The thing Thomas Jr. wants to do for a living? Race open-wheel Sprint Cars around some dusty tracks in Indiana, a place that’s become known as a breeding ground for some modern-day racing legends like Tony Stewart, A.J. Foyt and Kasey Kahne. Since he moved there in May, the 18-year-old driver — known as “KT” to his friends and fellow drivers — has already started making a name for himself with a combination of his do-it-yourself style, a healthy dose of Southern charm and a knack for smart racing.

The part he hated? Moving out of his parents’ house and away from all his high school friends, exactly two days after receiving his diploma from Good Hope High.

If it all sounds a little unconventional, that’s fine by Thomas Jr. and his parents — Kevin Thomas Sr. and step-mom Kristen Thomas, a pair who make the six-plus hour drive from north Alabama to Indiana every week from March to October. While they know Thomas Jr.’s career choice is hardly ordinary, they also know it’s far from directionless. That’s because even though Thomas Jr. made the decision to skip college, both he and his parents think of his time in Indiana as an apprenticeship, the left-hand turn before the straightaway that leads to much better things.

And besides, it’s not like this is Junior’s first summer in Indiana.



Getting Started

As a boy, Thomas Jr. excelled at all sports, but baseball was his game of choice. A page in his press kit proudly proclaims his membership on a 12U USSSA baseball team, and today it’s rare to see a picture of him without a baseball cap atop his head.

But racing was always around, mostly because of his dad, a former standout on the local Mini-Sprint Car series.

“I grew up around racing,” said Thomas Jr. “When I was seven days old, I was at the race track.”

Around the age of 13, Thomas Sr. gave his son his first shot behind the wheel of a Mini-Sprint Car. Pretty soon, the boy was turning into a man on the track.

In fact, it only took a few races.

“I told him, ‘When you can beat me, I’ll quit,’” said Thomas Sr., who won an estimated 50-60 races on the Mini-Sprint circuit. “And it only took him three races.”

The rest is history.

Thomas Jr. started his own Mini-Sprint career, running in races around the region, especially at the Talladega Short Track. In his first race, he went from 18th place to ninth at Arkadelphia’s River Valley Speedway

One day he came home from school to find a full-size Sprint Car waiting for him, a surprise from his parents.

By the summer of 2007, Thomas Jr. was traveling to Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to get laps in on the MSCS series. He finished the season as the MSCS Rookie of the Year and posted a top-10 in the USAC series just after his 16th birthday.

“I raced that first year, and we were real good right out of the box,” said Thomas Jr. “I raced that whole first season and I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this.’”



Getting Serious

The summer of 2008 might have been one of the worst possible times for an aspiring driver to get serious about racing. But that’s exactly what Thomas Jr. did.

Despite a downturn in the economy and a sharp rise in fuel prices, Thomas Jr. decided to spend the entire summer racing in Indiana. Even without the normal financial contribution from his parents.

Thomas Sr. wrote about the situation on his son’s Web site, KevinThomasMotorSports.com, early in the 2008 season.

“(At) the beginning of this past week I had to let Jr. know that money was scarce and that we wouldn’t be able to run Haubstadt (Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Ind.) on Saturday,” he wrote. “Without missing a beat, he let me know that, YES, we would be racing and that he would pay for it.”

Without sponsorship, and without his parents’ normal investment, Thomas Jr. made ends meet by mowing lawns in his downtime. And while most other drivers had a full team working on their cars, Thomas Jr. did all of his own mechanical work.

Making matters worse, Thomas Jr. didn’t have a spot in a shop where he could work on his car. The one thing he had — a small trailer where he kept most of his things — was broken into midway through the season. But working on his car in a parking lot, Thomas Jr. managed to live off his winnings until the fall, when he returned to Good Hope for his senior year.

There, he had to make a couple of tough choices: Would he race, or would he play baseball and have a normal, teenage social life?

He went with the first one, sort of. After a week full of classes, Thomas Jr. started making the now-customary six-hour drive back to Indiana for a weekend of racing. Each week, he made it back home just in time.

“I’d basically check out of school on Friday afternoon, go up to Indiana and race Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and drive all night back to Alabama,” he said. “I literally got in, took a shower and went to school.”

When baseball season rolled around, it got even tougher. But fortunately, the Raiders didn’t play any games on the weekend.

“Yeah, it got a little crazy during baseball season,” said Thomas Jr. “I would go to practice and then go home to work on my car until midnight. And then I’d do it all again the next day.”

No surprise, then, that with school, baseball and racing, Thomas Jr. didn’t have much time for a social life. Though he had a girlfriend and a set of friends to spend time with, most of his efforts went into racing.

And that’s just the way he liked it. No offense to anyone.

“I don’t really care about a social life that much right now,” said Thomas Jr. “I just want to race.”



Unique Path

Now 18 and fresh out of high school, Thomas Jr. leads an unconventional life. While most of his classmates are getting summer jobs or preparing for college, Thomas Jr. is already starting his career.

His parents? They’re more than okay with it. In fact, they’re his biggest supporters, through the good times and bad.

“This is all we do,” said Thomas Sr. “…Every little dime we have goes into getting him to this point.

“We told him, ‘You pick (between baseball and racing) and we’ll support you.’ We told him it’s his choice and we told him we’d support him either way.”

That assistance comes in the form of moral support and financial backing. Besides his parents, Thomas Jr. has no full sponsors. His only other backers are Chad Howard, owner of Sign Works in Cullman, and Daryl Guiducci, owner of Jet Star Fuels.

“Kevin knows it’s only him,” said step-mom Kristen Thomas. “There’s no one there for him to rely on.”

Thomas Jr. still works on his car mostly alone. His roommate, Brian, helps out, but there’s still not a full team to help with maintenance.

This year, though, Thomas Jr. does have a place to work on his car, a small corner in a shop owned by Guiducci. But that still doesn’t match up to what some of his competitors have at their disposal.

“Most of the teams have six or seven people working on their car,” said Thomas Jr. “We only have two, and we do just as good as them.”

The proof is in the results. Recently Thomas Jr. built himself a new car from scratch after his previous ride was banged up in an on-track incident. Since then, he’s recorded six top-10s in seven races.

Still, money is tight.

“If we run good, it’s going to be a good week, and if we run bad, I’m going to feel it some,” said Thomas Jr. “With the first car, I was struggling a little bit, but we’ve got it going now.”

But despite all the adversity, neither Thomas Jr. nor his parents are thinking about packing it in. Instead, for everyone involved, this is just a prelude for what’s yet to come.

Just think of it as a minor-league career, or even a kind of racing college.

“We’re at what I call the college football level,” said Thomas Sr. “It’s just as good as being in the NFL, but you’re just not getting paid like you’re in the NFL.

“This is not like high school football, this is Division I football.”

Being the only driver from the South — almost all hail from Indiana and the surrounding states of the Midwest — Thomas Jr. has already made a name for himself, equally because of his driving and because of his Southern charm.

“Manners have opened more doors for him than anything he’s done on the track,” said Thomas Sr.

That’s something any parent can be proud of. What’s less usual is the support Thomas Jr.’s parents have given him while he pursues such a unique path. But to them, there’s no other option.

“No kid is cookie-cutter,” said Kristen Thomas. “I’ve got two kids in college, but Kevin made the decision not to go to college. It’s our job to support him.”

For Thomas Sr., measuring success is less about making money than it is about the pursuit of happiness.

“If he’s making $25,000 a year and he’s happy, is that successful? Yes,” he said. “If he’s making $2 million a year and he’s unhappy? Nope.”



Perpetual Motion

Of course, making millions of dollars is something any driver, Thomas Jr. included, would love to do.

Like his peers on the track, Thomas Jr. aspires to follow in the footsteps of Stewart, Foyt and Kahne by moving on to NASCAR someday. For now, though, the 2009 Good Hope graduate is content to just live off his winnings while spending his evenings at a dusty track somewhere in Indiana.

“I want to get to NASCAR like every other kid, but it costs a lot,” he said. “If I could make a living doing this, I’d be happy.”

And so will his parents, who, like their son, seem to be in perpetual motion driving back and forth from Alabama to watch him race.

“We don’t even think of it (traveling long distances) as a big deal,” said Thomas Sr. “I guess we would if we didn’t do it every week, but we do it literally every week from March to October.”

Once the Indiana Sprint Car series ends in October, Thomas Jr. plans to visit home, but not for long. Almost as soon as the season is over in Indiana, a new one begins out West.

And that’s exactly where the 18-year-old plans to spend the winter: As usual, driving around a dirt track while chasing his dreams.

“I think we’ll do pretty well,” said Thomas Jr. “The races out here end around October, so I’ll go out West after that and do it all over again.”

‰ Michael Cummings can be reached by phone at 734-2131, ext. 258 or by email at michaelc@cullmantimes.com.