As a kid, Jon Denning loved to play with cars. Nothing unusual about that; such toys are a staple of childhood.

What is unusual is the extreme to which the Springfield native has taken it: Denning is a driver on the NASCAR circuit, a lone Jew in a sport renowned as a haven for “good ole boys.”

Denning’s story — which he will share at a talk Friday, Jan. 12, at Temple Beth Ahm in Springfield — is a New Jersey kid whose hobby turned into a passion and is now his profession.

Rather than worry about their son’s chosen profession, longtime Beth Ahm members Rochelle and Brad Denning embraced it, which is perhaps less difficult to understand given that they own Dobbs Autobody in Springfield.

Ever since Jon Denning can remember, his father worked with cars, either in the shop or around the house. The auto bug really bit him after he watched a TV show featuring go-carts. His father helped him with his hobby. “We started humbly,” Denning told NJ Jewish News, “with just a go-cart and a small tool box.”

Denning won several local races before tackling the World Karting Association, winning the 1999 International Championships at Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. The following year, he had several top-five finishes and won the 2000 Rookie of the Year award at Whip City Speedway in Westfield, Mass. By the time he turned 14, he was driving NASCAR-style late-model stock cars and was competing on a limited schedule throughout the Southeast.

Although he’s been driving for many years — New York Times sports columnist Robert Lipsyte called him “a face of NASCAR’s future” in 2003 when Denning was 16 years old (and could not drive legally in New Jersey) — Denning is still considered a rookie on the circuit. This is his third year in the NASCAR late-model division, the premier tier in the Dodge Weekly Racing Series.

Denning compared his status to that of a minor league baseball player.

“I’d be in what might be considered AA, [although] it’s somewhat simple to put it like that,” he said. “It’s harder to get up the levels of NASCAR than any other sport because your performance is so dependent on your equipment.”

This year Denning finished first or second in seven of the 21 events he started, but he also failed to finish six events because of mechanical problems. “A [support] team can make a driver look like a hero,” he said.

Denning acknowledged that it’s a dangerous job to fly around the track at speeds up to 130 MPH, and that racing attracts the morbid fascination of people who want to see spectacular crashes. He’s had his share of accidents, Denning said. “It’s like taking a giant hit in football. It’s violent, don’t get me wrong; I’m not going to say that it didn’t hurt. But I’m not complaining; it’s part of the game. Sure there’s risk involved, but there’s risk involved in everything.”

Denning said the “good ole boy” perception of his sport is waning in an era of huge TV contracts and multi-million-dollar endorsement deals for top drivers. “That’s the image NASCAR is trying to get away from,” he said.

Nevertheless, he said, he had difficulty adjusting during the periods he spent living in the hometown of his sponsor, Sellers Racing Inc. in Danville, Va. “The people I lived with are as genuine and friendly as can be. I’m the first Jew they ever met because they never left their town. But the cultural difference is amazing.”

The watershed moment came when he heard the expression “Jew him down” for the first time. “I bit my tongue because I was still trying to make a name for myself, and — not that I’m ashamed of being a Jew — I just think there’s a time and a place to defend yourself like that, and it would have just caused controversy at the time.”

Nevertheless, the incident had a lasting effect. “This year, I discovered what it means to be a Jew. I think in everyone’s life at one point, they have their eyes opened. You go to temple your whole life and you’re told what to pray. It’s one thing to do it because you’re told to, it’s another to do because you act or you think.”

That’s part of the message he wants to deliver at Beth Ahm, despite his aversion for promotional work on behalf of NASCAR. In this case, however, “it just seemed like something I would enjoy doing, something that I felt I should do.”

Rabbi Mark Mallach, religious leader of Beth Ahm, was less charitable when considering some questionable incidents Denning was part of on the race track. “Was he being slammed into the wall because he was a young rookie on the circuit…and the veterans were breaking him in? Or was he being crashed into the walls because he was a Jewish rookie?” Mallach asked.

He described Denning as “a fairly typical young man. He attended religious school, had his bar mitzva, came to synagogue on the High Holy Days, but otherwise was not looking for a keen attachment at that point in his life.”

But, said Mallach, Denning has begun to realize “what Judaism means to him.” That was why he asked Denning to speak at Beth Ahm. Because of his deepening appreciation for his Jewish identity, said the rabbi, “he becomes a role model for kids.”