Lepage making big strides with little team
By Lee Montgomery - Associate Editor
Thursday, April 10, 2008
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Gary Shook / NASCAR Scene
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A week before Nationwide Series teams were supposed to go through technical inspection for the first race of the season, Specialty Racing didn’t exist.
Oh, sure, team owners Doug Taylor and Charles Shoffner had a few ideas, and driver Kevin Lepage wanted to get back behind the wheel.
But there was much work to be done to resurrect the former Doug Taylor Motorsports and Specialty Motorsports teams from the 1990s. Cars had to be finished, people had to be put in place and, well, they had to make it to the race track.
The season-opener at Daytona wasn’t pretty, as Lepage failed to qualify for the Camping World 300, posting the 35th-fastest time among 53 drivers.
But since then, the upstart NASCAR team has been anything but slow. Considering how little budget it has and how new it is, what Lepage has done in the No. 61 Ford could be considered nothing short of a miracle.
No, this is definitely not a back-of-the-pack, start-and-park Nationwide Series team. Lepage won’t win any races this year, for the hill is too steep to climb.
But after seven races, Lepage has the No. 61 team 27th in owners points, guaranteeing him a starting spot in races week-to-week. And that’s after missing Daytona.
Specialty Racing is ahead of more established teams like Chip Ganassi Racing, Jay Robinson Racing and Baker Curb Racing in the owners standings.
To be that far up the standings truly is impressive.
“It is for the teams we’re racing against and the funding that’s out there,” Lepage said at Texas Motor Speedway, where he started 27th and finished 31st in the O’Reilly 300. “I think it’s really cool.”
It’s also an interesting career move for Lepage, the Cup series veteran who once drove for powerhouse Roush Racing. Last year, Lepage was with Front Row Motorsports but qualified for only two Cup races.
He also ran a handful of races in the No. 2 series, all with smaller, underfunded teams, and appeared in a couple of Craftsman Truck Series races, too.
But for this year, Lepage is full time with Specialty Racing, and he’s clearly enjoying himself – even if the level of expectation is different as compared to, say, Clint Bowyer or Carl Edwards.
While those drivers expect to win several races and contend for the Nationwide championship, Lepage simply wants to stay on the lead lap.
“I’m having more fun that I did last year,” Lepage said. “I did two races all of last year on the Cup side. Nashville was the only race that I went down one lap, and the other races, I went down a lap within the last 10 laps of the race. Up to Nashville, we had a car that was on the lead lap all the way to the end of the day. … I love the Nationwide Series.”
His salary with Specialty won’t make him rich, but there are other things more important than money.
“Obviously, the money’s not where it needs to be for me as a driver,” Lepage said. “But the ultimate deal is it’s all about what you do in a race car on Saturday, and I love to race. I’m having a great time.”
His best finish thus far was an 17th at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with an 18th at Bristol Motor Speedway – where Lepage won in a Taylor-owned car in 1998. Lepage has been running at the finish of the other four events: 23rd, 27th, 29th and 31st.
Not stellar results, of course, but perhaps better than expected.
“Our ultimate goal is to run all year and have a real good foundation for next year. We started this race team the Friday tech opened on Tuesday at Daytona,” Lepage said. “To come as far as we have in that short amount of time …
“We just need sponsorship.”
Ah, yes, sponsorship – the engine that drives race teams. It’s a difficult year to find backers for even the best Nationwide teams, but for a new team, it’s virtually impossible to get a sponsor with enough funding to run a race team the right way.
The team is leasing shop space from Travis Carter in Statesville, N.C., while trying to race every week. Specialty is also trying to buy cars from the former Carl A. Haas Motorsports team, which ran the series last year out of Carter’s shops.
“It’s tough week to week,” Lepage said. “We’ve had a lot of expense. We’re fortunate to have hotels [that have] donated rooms for us, and we’ve put their name on the car. But we need people to write checks for tires, motors, suspension and travel.”
With little money, it’s a constant battle to improve the team’s performance, but Lepage, Taylor and Shoffner all have years of NASCAR experience.
“We have Yates-Roush motors, we’ve got the years of experience that I have,” Lepage said. “Doug Taylor is an owner who also turns the wrenches, and he listens to the feedback that I give him. It just seems to be working.”
And Lepage will continue to try to make it work. The team will run full time in 2008 as it continues to grow for the future.
“That’s the plan,” Lepage said. “We’re going to do this thing all the way through.”
Associate Editor Bob Pockrass contributed to this report.
- Mentioned Drivers:
- Kevin Lepage
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