All News Andy Belmont Andy Hillenburg Carl Long Dale Earnhardt Joe Ruttman Kirk Shelmerdine Ryan Newman

Field Filler? [yeah is is long, but it interetsed me]:

March 14, 2004 at 12:00 AM
  • Kirk Shelmerdine went to the rear windshield of his #72 Ford Taurus with a wrench and took a few wedges out of the rear springs. He returned to the front of the car and began working under the hood. Later he jacked up the left side, rolled tires to the hauler and checked air pressure. When it was time to push the car to the inspection line he was there, too. To know Shelmerdine is not your typical NASCAR Nextel Cup series driver, one only has to look at his hands and uniform. They’re dirty. Shelmerdine, who will start 42nd in today’s Golden Corral 500 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, is one of the so-called field fillers that have become a hot topic during the first four races. The issue has ranged from NASCAR being accused of lobbying many low-budget teams to show up to fill the 43-car fields to those teams being criticized for not being able to meet the minimum race speed, thus endangering others. The issue peaked a few weeks ago at Rockingham when Joe Ruttman was pulled after one lap because he didn’t have a pit crew. “There’s been a lot more made of it than is actually going on,” Shelmerdine said. “I don’t think there’s people showing up just to fill up the field. That’s all conjecture by the press. NASCAR is not inviting people to come.” Shelmerdine’s only competition today will come from within. His qualifying speed of 178.413 mph is about 15 mph slower than the 193.575 mph posted by pole-sitter Ryan Newman. But Shelmerdine, who turned 46 on Monday, isn’t here to beat Newman. He’s here because he loves what he does. Racing isn’t easy when you don’t have a major sponsor, when you have two sets of good tires while everybody else has a dozen and when your car parts are older than some of the young drivers. Shelmerdine failed to make the field at Daytona, and he completed a combined 27 laps in races at Rockingham and Las Vegas. At Rockingham he was blackflagged after 19 laps for not meeting the minimum speed. His engine blew after eight laps at Las Vegas, leaving him with three. “We’ve got two worn ones and one good one,” Shelmerdine said. “If this one goes, we’ll stick a worn one in there and hope it doesn’t grenade.” Shelmerdine doesn’t live race to race. He’s one of the few drivers you’ll see under the hood getting dirty. While other drivers are making public appearances or testing at other tracks, he is at his small garage in Welcome, N.C., working morning to midnight to make sure he has a chance to qualify for the next race. He has been known to go through dumpsters for parts thrown away by other teams. Most of his parts are — like his hauler — used. “They only run the crankshafts about a 1,000 miles,” Shelmerdine said. “We buy them and run them another 1,000. Money is so tight that there isn’t enough to change the number on the side of the hauler from 27 to 72 [the number he used in 2003]. “Actually, we don’t have a ladder that goes that high.” He doesn’t have to look far to know what life is like on the other side. Richard Childress Racing, one of NASCAR’s empires, is across the street. “It’s a pretty big contrast,” Shelmerdine said of his shop and RCR’s multi-building facility. “We’re pretty much the outhouse.” Shelmerdine worked at RCR for 12 years. He was the crew chief for the late Dale Earnhardt for four of his seven Winston Cup (now Nextel Cup) points championships from 1986-92. When he was 25, he became the youngest crew chief to win a race and later the youngest to win a championship. But in 1992, at the age of 34, Shelmerdine left RCR to pursue his dream. He moved into the shop he had built while working for Earnhardt and began building cars. Since 1995, he has driven at practically every level, from ARCA to Busch to Trucks to Nextel Cup. “It’d be pretty neat to work with a really top team for a while,” Shelmerdine said. “I’m sure it would open some eyes from my end and other people’s ends as well.” When Shelmerdine says work he means drive. He has no desire to do what he did before because everything has become so high tech and assembly line. “We built chassis from the ground up when nobody was doing it,” he said. “It’s not nearly the art form it used to be. I’d be miserable doing that job now.” Shelmerdine said the negative publicity over low budget teams has been good. “It’s thrown a little more light on this end of the field, even if it’s not completely positive,” he said. “If I’m a sponsor I’m looking at these cars because they’ve been kind of a running story every week. It ain’t all good, but it’s news.”
    The good news for Shelmerdine is he has made enough money, about $143,000, to keep him coming back. “If I don’t pass out from lack of sleep, we can keep going indefinitely,” he said. “We’ll do as many of them as we can. If we have a bunch of wrecks three or four weeks in a row we’re going to be out for a while. But we’re getting better every week. By summer we might not be so pitiful.”(The State)
    …..why post this? cause Jayski has always been about trying to help out and mention the smaller teams and so called ‘field-fillers’ like Kirk, Hermie, Carl Long, Andy Hillenburg, Andy Belmont and whoever else, if there is a spot open in the field, why shouldn’t these guys gets a shot to get noticed.(3-14-2004)