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DARLINGTON, S.C. — It’s throwback weekend for NASCAR and Darlington Raceway, so it was fitting the first driver in the media center on Friday was Jeremy Clements.
Last week’s winner at Road America, Clements and his Spartanburg, South Carolina-based, family-owned Chevrolet team epitomize the term “throwback.”
Theirs is an effort that harkens back to the day when teams didn’t fly in race-day pit crews, you simply hired locals to help prepare, push and pit the car. You got friends who can be here this weekend? Great, we can get ’em in if you can get ’em here.
Back to a day when you didn’t have a new car for every track. Instead, you ran the same car as often as necessary. You ran the same engine as often as necessary. You ran the same tires … well, you get the idea.
To call the team small is to do small teams an injustice. Clements’ team is minuscule, run by Jeremy, his dad Tony, his uncle Glen and enough others to count on one hand. With fingers left over.
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Clements, 32, is a former Late Model racer who is “former” only in the sense of he’s not racing Late Models when he’s racing in the XFINITY Series. He’s won his share of races on dirt through the years.
But it took him 256 races to find Victory Lane in NASCAR. The better part of a dozen years. Not that he’s counting.
His victory in last week’s Johnsonville 180 at Road America has been called an upset. It’s been called a shocker. Even Clements said he was somewhat surprised by the outcome, even though road courses, he said, “are a little bit better for a driver and team like me with a low budget.”
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Money earned from the victory won’t go toward the purchase of new vehicles. Clements said he’s never driven a new car in the XFINITY Series and he’s been racing there, off and on, since 2003. “Nope,” he said, “no new car for me ever.”
Last week’s “throwback car” was an ’08 model, and will be run again. The engine has multiple races on it and will see more track time. Knowing that, he said he was particularly careful during his post-race celebratory burnout.
“Everything we buy is used,” he said. “Used parts, used cars. That’s just how we can get by. … That’s why it’s unbelievable to me … when I came up on the pack of guys that I passed for the lead at first, before I pitted, the 22, the 42, the 62, really strong cars, I was like ‘how am I so much faster than these guys? I don’t get it.’ And it was just unreal to me because it shouldn’t be that way.”
Nearly a week after the fact and it sounds almost as if he’s apologizing for the victory.
Other teams are better funded. Some enjoy affiliations with Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams. Used cars and used parts and patchwork crews, and still he’s competitive from time to time. And now Clements is a winner, playoff bound for the first time.
Days like last Sunday make it all worthwhile.
“Heck yeah man,” Clements said. “People are like, ‘Why do you keep doing this over the years?’
“We’re not terrible; we run respectable a lot of times. … I always knew we could do it, given the right opportunity, the right day, everything works out. We were able to prove some of those critics wrong. That’s why we do it.
“Obviously I raced in XFINITY, I won a lot of dirt races, a lot of stuff leading up to this. But you have to remember I drive for my family team … but that’s life. It’s not like I’ve been driving for Joe Gibbs Racing for 255 starts.
“I’m blessed that I get to do this and I want to keep it going as long as I can.”