03/27/2006 2:15 PM - There are few things in stock car Kirk Shelmerdine hasn’t already accomplished.
These days, he has his sights set on doing the impossible.
A retired crew chief, the Philadelphia native currently represents a rare breed in NASCAR: an owner who doubles as a driver.
In the season opener in Daytona, Shelmerdine qualified his No. 27 Chevrolet for the Great American Race, and proceeded to finish 20th.
The 20th-best car doesn’t sound like a huge accomplishment. However, in a racing climate dominated by large teams like Roush, Penske and Hendricks Motorsports, merely qualifying and finishing is accomplishment enough.
Asked if the success of a small team is possible in NASCAR, Shelmerdine answered with simplicity.
“No,” he said Friday. “It’s not. What limited success we’ve had already isn’t possible, and that’s one of the more satisfying things about it. We’ve pulled off some impossible things already.
“The other week at Daytona was an example. To be able to make a race like that against the odds we were against was pretty amazing and very satisfying.”
Shelmerdine would know, having been in and around the sport of racing since a young age. Enrolled at Penn State University as a freshman, the 18-year-old Shelmerdine dropped out a week after the start of classes, and moved to South Carolina to work with James Hilton.
“It’s kinda what I wanted to do while I was in high school,” he said. “I wanted to race, and I was enrolled at Penn State, and I really didn’t know what I was gonna study. About a week after classes started, I bailed out and moved South.”
To say it worked out would be an understatement. Shelmerdine’s career statistics include 246 top tens, 142 top fives, 14 pole positions and 46 wins. He is best known for his record-breaking achievements while working as crew chief for Childress racing. Between 1986 and 1992, he led Dale Earnhardt Sr. to four Winston Cup Championships and won honors such as Mechanic of the Year and UNOCAL Pit Crew Race Competitions multiple times.
He was a part of four victories at Talladega Superspeedway while working for Earnhardt.
His transition from retired crew chief to owner and driver for Kirk Shelmerdine Racing has been an interesting one. After having success as a driver on the ARCA series, he began to think about moving up.
“Cup series is where I’ve always been,” he said. “The prize money is a lot better, and the overhead costs are similar. It’s kind of a no-brainer. If we’re gonna be out there swinging, we might as well swing for the fence. In 2002, we got enough sponsors to get our own team off the ground.
“It’s a big challenge. Both of those jobs are almost too big for one guy to do, let alone both. I feel pretty inefficient sometimes, because I have to divide my time up sometimes and only hit the high spots. In the best scenario, it wouldn’t be like that.”
Like Earnhardt, the idea of racing with restrictor plates doesn’t appeal to Kirk Shelmerdine.
“Nobody likes the plates,” he said. “The reason we build cars to go fast is to make them go fast; and it’s kind of frustrating to have to engineer items in them that make them go slow.
“It does take quite a bit of driver skill out of going fast. Especially qualifying; it’s more an engineering feat than a driving feat. Some of the good drivers are stuck in the same pack. That’s frustrating from a driver’s standpoint.”
Having already seen some success at another restrictor-plate race track (Daytona), one might think Shelmerdine is excited about the possibilities for the upcoming Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway.
But he calls success at Talladega “traffic management.”
“Handling is a lot more of an issue at Daytona than Talladega,” he said. “Talladega’s more of a sheer speed thing. Daytona is more of the handling thing. There’s a little more working room, but not much.
“Talladega’s still the biggest and the baddest as far speed goes. If you have to pick three races to see as a new racing fan, Talladega’s got to be one of them.”
Shelmerdine was quick to mention crew chief Phil Harris, who has worked with him for the past 10 years.
“He’s hung in there with us,” he said. “It’s had its ups and downs, but it’s been satisfying.
“Hopefully we can come there to Talladega and have a little bit more of that. It’s a pretty tall order; we were lucky in a lot of ways at Daytona. Luck is a factor, but it’s not something you can rely on. We’ve got to have a different game plan than that.”
Not too tall an order for a man bent on accomplishing the impossible.
Will Heath
03-27-2006
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