Barnes' skill on the track continues to impress

If you don’t already know who Annabeth Barnes is, you soon will.

Barnes, 16 and a rising junior at Alexander Central High, is a fast-rising star in the stock car racing world whose No. 1 goal is to become the first woman to win the Daytona 500.

“Daytona is the one, it’s the big one,” said Barnes, who is second in the driver’s points standings in the Limited Late Model Division at Hickory Motor Speedway. “If you win that one, then you are somebody and you’ve proven that to the world, because everybody is gonna remember who won the Daytona 500 no matter what.

“To be the first woman to win that race would be amazing to me.”

Since sitting in anything that has a steering wheel, Barnes has known only one thing – drive fast and win.

“The first time I sat down behind the wheel of a car, I was about four,” said Barnes. “The first time I sat down in a racing go-kart, I was six or seven.

“I knew then that was what I wanted to do and had to beg my mom and dad to let me do it.”

The career starts

Barnes started racing competitively at age 9 in Kart Racing. That was in 2004 and she won 18 of the 22 races she entered and captured a track championship at Woodleaf Speedway, a dirt track near Salisbury.

Since then, Barnes has raced in Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, New York, Kansas, Georgia, and South Carolina. She’s won hundreds of races on dirt and asphalt and has won local, state and World Kart Association national titles.

In go-kart racing, drivers have to be at least 8 and the cars generally reach speeds of anywhere from 70 to 115 mph.

Barnes has racing in her blood. Her dad, Darren, raced Late Models in the 1980s at HMS. He won several races and finished second one season in the points standings.

“My dad always raced, so I grew up at Hickory Speedway watching him race,” Barnes said. “My sister (Jessica) started racing go-karts when I was younger, so I guess I just kind of fell into it.”

Jessica Barnes had some success in go-kart racing, but left the sport after being involved in a bad accident, her sister said.

Annabeth has never lost her zeal for racing. Getting in a race car – as the driver-- is special.

 On the track

Barnes says racing stock cars isn’t a great deal different from racing go-karts.

She picked up her first Limited Late Model victory on June 18 at HMS.

“Winning that race was pretty great,” Barnes said. “We had a string of bad luck for like five weeks in a row. That week, we. … practiced twice and worked on the car every night until late.

“So to finally get that win and for all of our hard work to just come together, it was pretty great and somewhat of a relief because we finally have the car good enough to win and can just take a breath.”

This season is Barnes’ first full one at HMS. She ran in five Limited Late Model races last season as a 15-year old and finished in the top 10 four times.

Next season, Barnes hopes to be running at HMS in the NASCAR Wheelen Late Model Series, but she probably won’t run for the points title.

“We plan to move to Late Model next year and will probably run at more tracks than just Hickory,” Barnes said. “It’s been great running for points this year, but we don’t want to do that next year because running for points is really stressful.

“We’re gonna travel around next year and run Late Models. Hopefully, we can run the Touring Series or run UARA.”

Down the road, Barnes plans to move into ARCA racing or the NASCAR Trucks Series, continuing her work toward her goal of a gig in the Sprint Cup Series.

 Keeping the dream alive

Once Annabeth grabs the wheel of a race car, she’s comfortable relying on her dad to guide her in other aspects of racing.

“I don’t really know much about working on the car,” Barnes said. “I can tell you what the car is doing or what needs to be done to the car when I’m on the track, but as far as what you need to do to fix it, I couldn’t do it myself. I leave that to my dad.”

Darren Barnes, 44, has a mechanical background that is valuable. Barnes’ car is worked on at the Steve Barnes Garage and Body Shop in Taylorsville, where her dad is part owner.

The garage was started by Annabeth’s grandfather, and her dad has learned some tricks of the trade to keep her cars running.

 “Nothing that we have done has been cheap,” Darren Barnes said. “Even back in 2006 in go-karting, we spent $100,000, so it’s never been cheap.

“But we’ve always been fortunate. We’ve never sat down and said we can’t do this because we don’t have a $100,000, and we really don’t have it.

“We’ve always been fortunate enough to get sponsors like our major sponsor this year, Oz Jewelers, along with some associate sponsors. We simply couldn’t do it without them.”

 Dealing with the attention

Being a young female race car driver brings Barnes attention and also the comparisons to perhaps one of the most well-known women in the sport, Danica Patrick.

“Pretty much everybody I talk to compares me to her,” Barnes said. “It kind of bothers me. I mean can you compare Dale Earnhardt to Jeff Gordon?

“It’s not right to compare people like that because everybody is their own person and everybody likes to make their own name, so I don’t think it’s fair that because I’m a girl that I automatically get compared to her.”

Those types of comparisons have come because of Barnes’ success and some of her media exposure.

In 2007, film director Marshall Curry, a documentary filmmaker from Brooklyn, N.Y., was exploring making a film about three Kart Series drivers. He was working with executive producer Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and spotted Barnes.

After several interviews, Barnes was chosen as one of the three drivers for “Racing Dreams” and the film, released in 2009, went on to win a best documentary award and was runner-up for the Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2009.

The movie is currently out on DVD.

“One day I read an article about kids 11, 12 and 13 that raced go-karts that go 70 miles per hour,” Curry said in a television interview about the documentary. “They are basically the Little League for NASCAR and I thought that sounded pretty intense, so I went to a few races and it was simply unbelievable, even for me, someone who didn’t care much about racing at all.”

Curry filmed the drivers – Barnes, Josh Hobson of Birch Run, Mich. and Brandon Warren of Creedmoor -- on and off the track for a year in 2006.

 “We met Annabeth at a Karting convention, which was part of an awards ceremony,” Curry said. “We talked to maybe 50 to 75 kids there and sometimes you meet someone that just stands out.

“With Annabeth, the opening scene in the movie where she is signing autographs and says, ‘I’ve always told my daddy that I wanted to be the first woman to win the Daytona 500’ was actually the test footage that we shot of her.

“She’s just funny and bubbly and also really smart, so it made her an easy choice.”

Barnes wasn’t paid for appearing in the movie and her family decided she should participate for the exposure.

“Being in a movie was really interesting,” Barnes said. “It was pretty cool for other people to find my life interesting.”

 Just a normal teenager

Even though Barnes is often asked about racing, she much prefers the quieter times at school and less hoopla.

“Some of my closest friends have told me that when they met me they would have had no idea that I’d ever been in a movie or anything,” Barnes said. “They never really knew that I raced cars, because I don’t talk about it that much.

“I really try to keep it separate because I get enough of school when I’m at school and I get enough of racing when I’m at the track.”

Racing does come with some sacrifices, though. Barnes doesn’t have time to play sports in high school or take trips to the mall like many teenagers.

“When I was in middle school, I played basketball and really liked it a lot,” she said. “But I just haven’t had time to play since I’ve been in high school. I really didn’t want to dedicate myself to something else when I’m already dedicated to racing.

“I’ve never been really exposed to going to the mall and hanging out with my friends and that was tough. But I know that what I’m doing is more important for my life and it’s gonna take me somewhere.

“I’m not going to become a professional race car driver by going to parties on Saturday night. I’m going to reach that goal by being at the race track on Saturday night.”

 What’s ahead

Although Barnes doesn’t really like all the attention, more could be on the horizon.

Her dad says Great American Country (GAC) television had been filming a reality series and his daughter could be featured in the possible series.

“Nothing has been signed yet, but it’s definitely in the works,” Darren Barnes said. “Annabeth’s show will be the first of its type and the production company seems happy with what they’ve seen thus far.”

The series, if approved, could begin airing in the fall on the GAC network.