Shepherd still hopes to run Cup: Morgan Shepherd hasn’t totally shelved his Winston Cup dream, either. He has 481 Cup starts and four Cup wins under his belt, and his last Cup foray came in 1999, when he drove one race for Junie Donlavey. His last full-time season was a 23-race stint in 1997. His last Cup win came in 1993, in Atlanta. “Our plans were to be here at Martinsville,” Shepherd said of Sunday’s Virginia 500. “We had a guy who was supposed to help us with the engine up here and at the last minute he backed out. We’re ready to go Winston Cup racing. We’ve got the shop and facilities, but just don’t have the money to operate.” The fact a Cup engine costs approximately $40,000 doesn’t help. So Shepherd has cast his lot with NASCAR’s Craftsman Truck series, where he ran 16 races last season and finished 26th in the final points standings. His nine DNFs were a bit harder to swallow. Shepherd Racing was formed in 1998 with a $25-million-dollar sponsorship agreement to field a Cup team, but the insurance-company sponsor pulled out of the deal, leaving Shepherd on his own. Last year’s $3,000 donation from a fan group was his sole source of outside aid. “We’re still racing without money,” Shepherd said. “So there’s only so much we can do. Our goal is to build our Christian team that we set out to do, and do things to help change people’s lives. We’re just looking for a sponsor.”(CNN/SI, NASCAR.com)(4-13-2002)
