Team Rensi Motorsports announced that veteran driver Kevin Lepage will pilot the #24 Ford Mustang in full-time, Nationwide Series competition in 2011. Lepage, a native of Shelburne, Vt., has a NASCAR Nationwide Series career that spans three decades with 17 years of competition in the sport’s second-tier series. In total, he has earned two wins, 19 top-fives and 51 top-10 finishes along with four pole awards in Nationwide Series competition. Lepage has also found success in both the Sprint Cup and Craftsman Truck Series. Longtime Team Rensi crew chief Chris Wright will lead Lepage and the #24 team beginning with the season-opening race at Daytona International Speedway in February. Team Rensi Motorsports is currently working with racedaysponsor.com and the organization anticipates sponsorship and additional team announcements in the coming weeks.(Rensi PR)(1-10-2011)
UPDATE: Lepage told Sirius NASCAR Radio’s Sirius Speedway with Dave Moody, “I’m real excited about it. I talked to several different teams, and Ed Rensi and (GM) Ronnie Russell were absolutely the best fit. They needed a driver in order to negotiate with sponsors, and I needed a team, so we put the deal together at the first of the week. I have a little bit of sponsorship from RaceDaySponsor.com, and we’re chasing more. We’ve got a lot of things working.” Lepage made 25 Nationwide Series starts last season for Mac Hill Motorsports; all of them of the “start and park” variety. The Shelburne, VT native said he is looking forward to completing races this season. “I’m going to be racing all day for the first time since 2008, and I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “It was frustrating to start and park. It hurts to have to race the way we did. We qualified in the Top 20 — or even the Top 10 — most weeks, but we couldn’t afford to run the race. I’d qualify the car well, then get told, `We just sold your tires, so run a couple of laps and pull it in.’ We had fast cars, but we never got to show it. “It ate me apart,” admitted Lepage. “When season was over, I told my wife I wasn’t going to do it again. If there was nothing left for me but `start and park,’ I was ready to pack it in and call it a career.”(Sirius Speedway)(1-11-2011)
