Biagi, DenBestes run XFINITY for love of racing

Before the 2012 NASCAR XFINITY Series season, they also shared a bottle of wine, and they teamed up to start Biagi-DenBeste Racing.

Biagi was no stranger to owning a NASCAR team. He had his own organization from 2001 through 2006, winning in the summer of 2004 at Daytona International Speedway with Mike Wallace.

“Bill and Lori are really good friends, and they had raced with me before,” Biagi said of the DenBestes, fellow residents of Santa Clara, California. “I think over a really good bottle of wine one night we decided we might stick our toe back in and do whatever our finances would let us do.”

At Daytona, Aric Almirola earned a seventh-place finish, the fourth for the No. 98 Ford Mustang since the team’s inception. After Sam Hornish Jr. piloted the car last week to a 15th-place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Almirola is back behind the wheel at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

The Richard Petty Motorsports drivers are benefitting from their team’s partnership with Biagi-DenBeste Racing, powered by Ford Performance. They are driving for DenBeste’s Carroll Shelby Engine Company, carrying on the legacy of the late legendary racer and car builder whose Shelby American Inc. is based in Las Vegas.

DenBeste was friends with and bought the engine company from Shelby, who died in 2012. They crossed paths are car collectors.

“We became Cobra dealers and build them with Shelby engines and ship them all over the world,” Bill DenBeste said. “We have customers in Canada, China, Japan, Belgium.”

In honor of Shelby and in support of their love of cars and competition, Biagi and the DenBestes hope to run full time as they work their way back to Victory Lane.

“We want to run up front and win races,” Biagi said. “Hopefully, that will lead to sponsorship, and then we might run a whole season. Right now, it’s whatever we can manage to do. We ran 16 races last year. That’s what we’ll put on the drawing board.”

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