Auto Racing: 16-year-old Kruger wins TSRS late-model title

Sports

November 28, 2009

By CHUCK LICATA The San Marcos Record Sat Nov 28, 2009, 04:49 PM CST

Kyle — Jake Kruger, a 16-year-old late-model driver from Bastrop, refuses to acknowledge a championship he won during a four-race season when he raced quarter midgets years ago.

It’s not surprising, though, that Kruger – the driver for Kruger Motorsports – won’t soon forget his latest trophy; the 2009 Texas Super Racing Series championship. TSRS a state series that regularly races at Thunderhill Raceway in Kyle.

“I appreciate this championship and will enjoy it a lot,” stated Kruger, the son of Bill and Deb Kruger. “It took 11 years to get here, but I finally got here.”

Surprising words from one so young.

However, consider his father, Bill, was a long-time local short-track racer and Jake grew up around racing. And consider the youngster – who rebounded to win two races in his Rookie of the Year season in 2008 – didn’t even start the ’08 season-opener because Kruger Motorsports had problems with race engines.

This past season, though, there was very little trouble in a TSRS series filled with great drivers.

Kruger took the checkered flag five times in a 10-race season in ’09 as he beat out long-time racing veteran Robert Barker (Boerne, TX) by 50 points (1,687-1,637).

Don’t get it wrong – Kruger, his parents (Bill and Deb), his younger sister (Nikki), his crew chief (Texas short-track veteran John Heil) and the team’s sponsors and crew all worked very hard to claim the ’09 TSRS title.

“We were originally thinking that five wins in the season wouldn’t be enough,” Kruger stated. “We wanted to win six and tie Tommy Gural and Chris Schild (the all-time leaders in TSRS features wins with eight apiece). It didn’t hit me at first (that he’d won the championship) until people came up and congratulated me. I enjoyed it; it felt pretty good.”

Even more important, though — a late-model championship at 16 years old.

“That’s what (crew chief) John Heil told me, the importance of a late-model title,” Kruger said. “He said you need to put a late-model championship on your resume; as the season went, on I understood what he was saying — to be 16 and beating everyone else out there.”

“He’s 10 times the driver that I was,” joked Kruger’s father Bill. “The championships I accomplished were minor compared to what he’s done. I’ve never done what he did at his age and it means a lot to me to say he learned from me; he surpassed my level a long time ago.”

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Auto Racing: 16-year-old Kruger wins TSRS late-model title

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