NASCAR has no problem with 72-year old Morgan Shepherd

Only in NASCAR can a 72-year old compete at the top tier

NASCAR vice president of competition defended Shepherd saying the veteran "met all of the requirements" established by the sanctioning body. He qualified the situation by calling it "an accident, that could have happened to anybody" and maintained that the #33 Chevy had no issue dropping "to the minimum speed" required at Loudon, "so there wasn't any issue with that."

"Morgan Shepherd has always been approved," Pemberton said. "He's been approved for decades. Under our situation here, you take a physical at the beginning of the year, you pass your physical, you pass inspection with your car, you qualify for the race and you run the event. He met everything he needed to meet." Motorsport

Shepherd was a whopping 16 laps down at the time, after qualifying slowest in the 43-car field, 2.2 seconds off Kyle Busch’s pole speed. His time was a quarter of a second slower than that of the 42nd-place qualifier, Timmy Hill, and he ran 20-30 mph off the pace from the outset before losing the handle, drifting up the track and wrecking Logano.

“I just gotten taken out by the slowest car out there," said an incredulous Logano afterward. “You'd think there would be some courtesy to the leaders, (but) I guess not. I feel there should be a driver's test, but I guess there isn't.''

Sunday’s incident will almost certainly re-ignite the debate over the need for further age restrictions in NASCAR. At present, the sanctioning body mandates only a minimum age for national series competition, while requiring drivers to prove their mettle on smaller tracks before being cleared to race on superspeedways. There is no maximum age limit, however, and drivers like Shepherd who have competed for decades routinely receive the green light to continue racing for as long as they like, provided they pass a simple, pre-season physical examination. Aging drivers are not required by the sanctioning body to prove they can skill perform at a high level behind the wheel, and in light of Sunday’s incident, the time for such requirements may finally have come.

This is not the first time in recent seasons that Shepherd has served as a rolling road block. Last fall, he struggled mightily at the Loudon speed plant in equipment that was admittedly not up to snuff. Unfortunately, the results were the same this time around, despite driving for a Circle Sport Racing team that performed well the previous week at Daytona International Speedway with driver Bobby Labonte. Shepherd was embarrassingly slow again Sunday and consistently impeded the progress of the leaders before ending Logano’s bid for Victory Lane in an incident that quite simply should never have happened.

I have great respect for Morgan Shepherd, as both a racer and a man. He is a four-time NASCAR Sprint Cup Series winner, with an additional 15 career victories in what is now the NASCAR Nationwide Series. In his day, he was a force to be reckoned with, wherever and whenever he raced. But those days are long gone. The Godfather's Blog