[Lefty Noob]

Thought it'd be nice to take a break from the Johnson and Stewart controversies to pass a long a nice story that came out of this Sunday's race.

Kirk Shelmerdine, a former crew chief who worked with Dale Earnhardt, finished 20th in his first Daytona 500. Shelmerdine doesn't have either a major sponsor or a full-time pit crew, but he still won more than $250,000 for his efforts. And all this happened in a car that had a sponsor-donated engine and tires bought for him by a family of Earnhardt fans.

Congrats, Kirk. An amazing and well earned 20th place finish!

[PettyFan]

Did Kirk get any additional sponsors on the car after making it in the race? I heard them talking about that possibility in an interview with Kirk on XM radio. Humm...Can't remember seeing his car all day yesterday. Nice finish Kirk!!

[GigEmAgs]

Holy cow -- $250K. Great Cinderella story, and I'll just bet he's got sponsors lining up now. Ya know, I haven't had any tickets for a while...wonder if they'll let a 2002 Ford Focus into the race...or maybe I should just try a demolition derby.

[Bonko]

I'm glad to see Kirk Shelmerdine have some success with his racing dreams. The guy has been around seemingly forever; as crew chief for RCR with Dale Earnhardt (4 championships?) and more recently on his own as a driver. The persistence of guys like Shelmerdine, Carl Long, Morgan Shepherd and others shows the potential of the premise that you don't NEED buckets of money to go racing. If you take away the motorcoaches and R&D teams and catering etc... it really just boils down to the pit crew, the driver, and the car on track. The technology can be bought these days. All of the better financed teams sell cars and engines to guys like Shelmerdine and others. It seems to me to be only a matter of time before somebody puts together a no-frills operation, (spending their money on going faster, longer) that will truly be competitive. You'll still need a bucket of money; but maybe not such a big one.