Things progressed as normal in 2019 and Jeremy Ottinger was also fielding a car for his son. Hopkins surmises that his owner may have just begun to get worn down and he recalls that he also decided to sell his cars in order to invest in some property. There were no hard feelings. In fact, the two remain friends to this day.
All of this said, he now needed to find a new ride. He had a lot to balance. Not only had A.J. progressed in the sprint car world but he also had moved up the ladder at Banning Engineering as a surveyor. “I got into it as a rod man,” he says. “The lowest level, a greenhorn.” Seven years later he now serves as a foreman, and as a commercial drone pilot he is using state of the art technology to revolutionize the surveying industry. The work can range from typical construction projects to contracts for the Department of Natural Resources.
He also has two young daughters, Faith and Khloe. Sure he could still dream about chasing the USAC National Tour, but that wouldn‘t make sense for him at any level. His family is important, he was progressing in his job, and his rational side reminded him that no matter what he accomplished now no one from NASCAR was going to give him a call.
Maybe those extraneous factors worked against him with some owners. Not Jerry Burton. Jerry liked what he saw.
“I can‘t say enough about A.J.,” Jerry says, “and just how proud I am of him. He is a good-hearted young man. He has family morals and he is what you want a young gentleman to be.”
Burton admits he really isn‘t impressed with drivers who show little ambition outside a race car, and who seem too content to spend most of their free time unproductively. For his part, Jerry was not going to put pressure on his driver and he decided to let A.J. let him know when he wanted to race. It turns out that once things opened back up in 2020 Hopkins was very interested in stabbing the throttle as often as possible.
The truth is that Hopkins was enamored with his owner and the family atmosphere that surrounded the entire team. “We work on the car in Jerry‘s two-car garage,” he says. “And he can probably put 10 cars together with all of the parts he‘s got. They have good cars, good engines, and the family is awesome and so are all of their friends. If you go to the house there will be five or six cars in the front yard and the sprint car is in the driveway. It‘s just good old boys racing. They do their homework. Then every night they have 10 to 15 people at the track in the stands.”
In the truncated 2020 season the family and fans of this team had a lot to cheer for. As the season began to wind down it became clear that Hopkins had a chance to capture three track championships. As anyone who has been in that position can attest, the closer they got to sealing the deal, the harder it became. “Honestly I had never run for points,” he says. “And we really weren‘t running for points this year but we happened to run all of the races. So, at the end, yes it became important because I had never won a championship since quarter-midgets, and Jerry had never won a championship in a sprint car.”
While he admits he finally embraced going after a title, it didn‘t mean he really enjoyed it. “It stinks doing a points deal,” he says. “Because then you have that in the back of your mind. Then you take it easy instead of going for the win because you don‘t want to screw up the points. I have never done that before. It‘s a different ballgame. So if I went to Kokomo I would think I can‘t screw the car up here and not be able to run the other tracks. It‘s tough.”
In the end, A.J. Hopkins won the track championships at Bloomington, Paragon and Lincoln Park. Given existing records that have been uncovered, Kelly Kinser who won the Bloomington, Paragon and Kokomo Speedway titles in 1982 is the only other driver who can be confirmed at the moment to have captured three Indiana track championships in a single year. “To win one was awesome,” A.J. said, “but to win three was crazy. It still hasn‘t soaked in yet, and I know it is just local but there are some tough guys there every night.”
His owner was equally impressed with how everything turned out. “That was amazing,” Burton said. “I don‘t know if people understand what an achievement that was. I was shocked.”
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