Kenna Mitchell has been racing for just seven years, and she already has four championships to her name.
The 18-year-old entered the 2024 season at Roseville, California’s All American Speedway having already won a couple titles, one as the junior track champion and the other in the track’s Bandolero division. This summer, she added two more.
Mitchell won the track’s Super Series division by 14 points and the Pro Late Model division by 34 points. She was the only driver at the track to win multiple championships this year.
“It feels really great,” Mitchell said. “My team put in a lot of effort this year, and getting both of those championships meant a lot to us. … My team worked hard all year to get this fast car. It was really cool to be able to race against other people who have track championships there.
“Thank you to my sponsors and my family and my team. They were what made the year and the season happen.”
All American’s season began June 1, which just so happened to be the same day as Mitchell’s high school graduation. She got her diploma early in the day, went to the race track at night and won both races — which, she said “felt pretty great.”
Mitchell carried that momentum through the summer. She felt confident racing the Pro Late Model but thought she’d experience an adjustment period in her first season racing the Super. Not only was she racing the car for the first time, but she was going against some of the best drivers on the west coast.
She practiced by competing in what she called “learning races” with the CARS Tour West.
“I had so much fun in that race and felt like I learned so much about the Supers,” she said. “I started, I think, second in that race, and if I hadn’t had a throttle cable issue, I would have most likely just passed the guy on the inside and kept running. But being able to pass that many cars was so much fun to me. Just learning, being like, ‘Man, this is a lot different than the Pros.'”
By the time she started the season at All American, Mitchell felt like a pro in both series.
“The end of the races were just so close,” she said. “We had to earn finishes. We had one race where we were back and forth for like all 100 laps. … It was really fun.
“Especially with being with the same drivers all year, I’m learning how they drive and then what I’m getting ready for. I know I can bump this guy and he won’t go around, or I know this guy will bump me, and I need to be ready for that. Just as a driver, getting used to the Supers was a lot. It’s like 200 more horsepower than the Pros were. I go from going down the straightaway, hitting the chip at the end, to going down the straightaway and going, ‘Am I able to get full throttle here? I think I am.'”
Mitchell is a second-generation driver. Her dad raced Modifieds, and the family followed him to races up and down the west coast.
When she was 10, Mitchell told her dad she wanted to race, too.
“My dad’s like, ‘Alright, we’ll see what we can do,'” she said. “And then when I turned 11, we got a Mini Cup, and that’s where I started racing was in those. I had a lot of fun. It was like, I want to keep doing this.
“I tried a bunch of other sports, but they never really clicked. But racing was just so much fun. My first year, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do.'”
At such a young age, Mitchell said she liked knowing how to drive a race car before she was allowed to drive on the road. Being able to drive fast added to the excitement.
“I can go out on a race track and go as fast as I want; as fast as the car allows,” she said. “Mini cars aren’t very fast, but to be able to drive a car, it was so much fun for me, especially after watching my dad for so long.
“You don’t see as many people out there in Mini Cups, but for the time I did it, it was such a great time to start because all the tracks we went to had somewhat of a competitive Mini Cup league. Same with Bandoleros when I moved up to those. We had a great championship battle at Roseville.”
More than anything, Mitchell fell in love with racing simply because the craft was fun. And it’s still just as fun today as she learns new cars and travels to new tracks.
“I’d say I probably just like the competition, working with your team, getting the car set up,” she said. “Just knowing we don’t know how the weekend’s going to go. Just being able to be out on the race track, doing laps, making adjustments to my car, talking to my team.
“I’m always nervous on the first start. I go, ‘Man, I really hope we get a good start,’ because that kind of, for me, just sets the race. And then once the race is going, I just have so much fun battling.”
Mitchell plans to stay in both series next year and compete for both championships at All American, as well as a California state championship and a CARS Tour West title.
“We’re going to race a lot,” she said “Any race we can get to.”