SEASON IN REVIEW
Ferguson, North Carolina driver Morgan Shepherd picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 1983, scoring three last-place finishes in twenty-six starts during a thirty-race-season.
Shepherd was competing in his sixth season on the Cup Series tour in a career that dated back to his first start at Hickory, North Carolina on June 20, 1970, where he finished 19th in a field of 22. At age 38, he scored his first Cup Series win at Martinsville, Virginia on April 26, 1981 and finished 13th in points that season, then improved to 10th in points driving the Ron Benfield-owned #98 Levi Garrett Buick in 1982.
Shepherd and Benfield parted ways after the 1982 season and drove for four different teams in the first seven races of 1983, including Cecil Gordon’s #24 Chrysler in Darlington, South Carolina, where he finished 26th on April 10. Two weeks later on April 24, Shepherd scored his first career last-place finish in the Virginia National Bank 500 at Martinsville, Virginia, driving the #01 Zervakis Racing Buick fielded by former Cup driver Emanuel Zervakis. The #01 suffered an oil leak after only eight laps.
In the next race at Talladega, Alabama on May 1, Shepherd joined the Jim Stacy team to drive the same #2 Buick campaigned briefly the year before by defending LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Joe Ruttman. Following a 17th-place finish in the Talladega race, Shepherd raced for Stacy for the rest of the season, scoring his other two last-place finishes in the process.
Shepherd’s second last-place finish of 1983 came at Brooklyn, Michigan during the Champion Spark Plug 400 on August 21 where his #2 ACM Equipment Sales Buick broke a valve after 63 laps. The third finish came five races later back in Martinsville, Virginia on September 25, where his #2 broke a timing chain after just three laps. This made Shepherd the second driver to sweep both last-place finishes at Martinsville, the first since Bill Champion in 1973.
Shepherd did, however, score three Top Fives and thirteen Top Tens with Stacy in 1983, including a runner-up finish to Buddy Baker in the Firecracker 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida on July 4. However, with only a 20th-place finish in the point standings, Shepherd and Stacy parted ways as well.
Shepherd would go on to make 514 Cup Series starts over twenty-seven seasons, scoring another three victories on Hampton, Georgia’s 1.5-mile track in 1986, 1990, and 1993. After 1983, he would race for an incredible thirty-three different teams, including Bud Moore, the Wood Brothers, Petty Enterprises, RahMoc, Hal Needham, Kenny Bernstein, and himself.
In 2002, Shepherd, a born-again Christian, made his first Cup start in three years, debuting a self-prepared #89 Ford at Loudon, New Hampshire, a car whose hood would soon carry the “Racing for Jesus” logo for many of his future starts. Shepherd and his #89 still competed regularly in the XFINITY Series through 2019, five years after his last start in Cup. His team shut down midway through the COVID-affected 2020 campaign.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
The 1983 Rookie of the Year winner and second-generation racer Sterling Marlin scored his first last-place finish in ‘83 when his #17 Hesco Exhaust Chevrolet lost the engine after 53 laps of the October 9 running of the Miller High Life 500. It was in that race that Richard Petty scored his controversial 198th career victory where his #43 STP Pontiac was found to have improperly-mounted tires and an engine that was more than 20 cubic inches too big. In 1995, Petty and Marlin would also become two of only three drivers at the time to score back-to-back Daytona 500 victories, joining Cale Yarborough, who won the 500 in 1983 and 1984.
Bobby Gerhart, who would go on to win an improbable eight ARCA races at Daytona including three in a row, scored his first Cup Series last-place finish in 1983 during the Van Scoy Diamond Mine 500 in Long Pond, Pennsylvania. Gerhart was making his Cup Series debut that day driving an unsponsored #19 Buick for owner Henley Gray when his engine let go after 44 laps. Gerhart made twenty-four Cup Series starts from 1983-1992 and scored a career-best 19th in his own equipment, a #49 Chevrolet, during the Holly Farms 400 at North Wilkesboro, North Carolina on October 14, 1984.
On November 20, Jimmy Insolo drove a second DiGard-owned Buick in the season finale at Riverside. Insolo’s 29th and final Cup Series start ended when he pulled the #12 Miller High Life Buick behind the wall after the opening lap. Much as Neil Bonnett would do for Dale Earnhardt a decade later, the effort was done to help DiGard’s veteran driver Bobby Allison win his first Cup Series championship. Allison accomplished this by finishing a strong 9th.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Morgan Shepherd (3)
2nd) Tommy Gale, Cale Yarborough (2)
3rd) Rick Baldwin, Ed Baugess, Geoffrey Bodine, Ron Bouchard, Ernie Cline, Clark Dwyer, Bobby Gerhart, Bobby Hillin, Jr., Ronnie Hopkins, Jimmy Insolo, Terry Labonte, Jocko Maggiacomo, Sterling Marlin, John McFadden, Pat Mintey, Benny Parsons, Kyle Petty, Mike Potter, Dick Skillen, D.K. Ulrich, Blackie Wangerin, Bobby Wawak (1)
