These days, Morgan Shepherd is best known to NASCAR audiences as the Faith Motorsports driver who can be seen roller skating in the pits before the race begins.

Most do not know the history of this successful race car driver.

Prior to his NASCAR career, Shepherd was a force to be reckoned with on the local North Carolina race tracks. The Conover, NC native won various regional titles and finished second in NASCAR’s Late Model Sportsman division in 1973.

In 1981, Shepherd, a rookie in the Cup Series that year, won his first race in NASCAR’s premier division at Martinsville Speedway in the Virginia 500.

 He led three separate times for a total of 294 of the 500 laps and beat Neil Bonnett by 15 seconds.

Shepherd took the checkers in the No. 5 Cliff Stewart owned Pontiac which was the first victory for Pontiac since Joe Weatherly’s victory at Hillsboro in 1963.

“It didn’t sink in until I came around for the checkered flag,” Shepherd said, according to Greg Fielden’s Forty Years Of Stock Car Racing. “I almost cried.”

Amazingly enough, out of the 31 drivers in the field that day, only two still actively race in NASCAR including Shepherd who recently celebrated his 68th birthday.

The other driver, Terry Labonte, was driving a Buick and finished 5th that day; Labonte has made five starts in the Cup Series this year.

James Hylton was also in that 1981 race and finished 17th. Now, he is an active driver in the ARCA RE/MAX Series at the age of 75 and occasionally enters into a NASCAR Nationwide Series event.

Shepherd went on to win three more Cup races and currently runs in the Nationwide Series.

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