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At some point Saturday night, 16-year-old John Kinder hopes his stock car apprenticeship will end. Then, he'll cease to be a novelty, a boy racing against men. He'll be just one of the guys.
After two previous trial runs-races in which his main objective was simply to learn, not contend-Kinder will be racing for real Saturday night on the half-mile paved oval at Bakersfield's Mesa Marin Speedway.
The race, Kinder's third as a stock-car racer, figures to be another step on the way to a career as a professional NASCAR driver.
For his 10th birthday, Kinder went to kart racing school. By the time he turned 11, he was experienced enough to begin racing on his own. At 12, he was winning local races and traveling to the Grand Nationals in Richland, Wash. By age 15, he had won three national championships and it was time to move up in class.
Next stop, Kinder and his father Jim decided, was NASCAR and late-model stock cars. So Kinder attended Skip Barber's stock car racing school in Las Vegas and then to the Charlotte Motor Speedway school in North Carolina.
In his first...