Nov. 4, 1945: Kenny Weld Is Born in Kansas City
Kenny Weld won the Knoxville Nationals at 18, went on to win it four times, captured three Williams Grove National Opens and later built the “Batmobile” modified and the Weld Tech business.
Kenneth Eugene Weld was born Nov. 4, 1945, in Kansas City, Missouri, into a racing family. He started racing in 1961 at Riverside and Lakeside Speedways, moving from jalopies to sportsman cars and then to super modifieds in 1962, according to the Eastern Motorsport Press Association. In 1964, at 18, he won the Knoxville Nationals. Teamed with his father, Taylor “Pappy” Weld, in a car known as the “Tank,” he won the event again in 1965. He returned from Pennsylvania to win two more Nationals in 1972 and 1973 for car owner Bob Weikert, giving him four Knoxville Nationals titles in nine starts, according to The Third Turn.
By the late 1960s Weld had moved east and became one of the leading outlaw sprint car drivers before the World of Outlaws formed in 1978. In 1970 he won 27 features and the Williams Grove championship in Bud Grimm’s car, and in 1974 he won 39 features and a record fifth Williams Grove championship, according to EMPA. The Third Turn credits him with three wins in seven starts in the Williams Grove National Open, along with a win in the Tuscarora 50. In 1975 he moved to big-block modifieds and won 16 races driving for Weikert at Reading.
Weld’s influence extended to car building. In 1980 he built, with Don Brown, the modified known as the “Batmobile” for Gary Balough. Balough won at Syracuse with it, and the rules were changed to keep cars like it from racing again. Weld retired from driving after a crash at Buckeye Speedway in Ohio in 1988 and founded Weld Tech with his brother Greg and his daughter Debra; the business became known for cylinder-head porting. He was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1997 and died March 20, 1997, after a two-year battle with cancer.
The Weld family is well represented in the Hall. Greg Weld, the 1963 Knoxville Nationals winner and 1967 USAC sprint car champion, was inducted in 1998, and Pappy Weld, who started the family’s open-wheel tradition by building and owning a midget in the 1930s, was inducted in 2006.