No driver in the history of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series has started more races than Kenny Wallace, who made 547 starts in NASCAR’s second-tier series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But 41-year-old Jeremy Clements, a blast-from-the-past owner-driver from Spartanburg, South Carolina, will tie Wallace’s record at Pocono Raceway on Saturday and break it with start 548 next week at Naval Base Coronado.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clements made his series debut back in 2003, two years after Wallace’s ninth and final series win at Rockingham in 2001. Clements didn’t contest a full NOAPS season until 2011, but he’s since become one of the series’ mainstays.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJeremy Clements reflects<\/p>\n
“It’s incredible,” Clements said Friday at Pocono. “Didn’t start racing in this series to get that, but now that we’re here it’s pretty cool.”<\/p>\n
Since his rookie campaign in 2011, Clements has driven his No. 51 Chevrolet for the aptly named Jeremy Clements Racing. In an era of NASCAR full of big-time teams with deep pockets owned by larger-than-life individuals, Clements is a throwback to a bygone era.<\/p>\n
“Even though we’re a small team, we work hard, and we don’t give up,” Clements said. “To still be racing and loving what I get to do every week, it sure is a blessing.”<\/p>\n
While things certainly haven’t been easy over the years for Clements and his No. 51 group, there have been several shining moments. Clements has two victories to his credit: his first career victory at Road America in 2017 and one at Daytona in 2022. He made the O’Reilly Series playoffs three times and has been a model of consistency for a driver working with lesser equipment, never finishing outside of the top-21 in the standings in his 15 full-time seasons.<\/p>\n
“I’m 41 now,” Clements said. “Kenny was 51 [when he made his last start]. I know I can still go a long time. Hope I can just make [the record] where it’s unbreakable.”<\/p>\n
Even in a down season for the veteran driver \u2014 Clements is 19th in the standings through 16 races \u2014 his passion for the sport of NASCAR racing hasn’t left him with any desire to bow out of the series any time soon.<\/p>\n
“I just love racing,” Clements said. “I’ve always loved it since I was a kid. It’s just a job I don’t take for granted. I guess when I do lose the part that makes it fun I might look in the mirror and say, ‘It might be time to stop.’ But it hasn’t happened yet, [hasn’t] even gotten close.<\/p>\n
“Of course, there’s a lot of ups and downs in this sport. Each week’s a rollercoaster. But if you still love it, you keep doing it.”<\/p>\n
Quotes provided by NASCAR Media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No driver in the history of the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series has started more races than Kenny…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-733222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}