Morgan Shepherd Qualifies for 1,000th Career NASCAR Race

At 76 years old, Morgan Shepherd continues to work on race cars and get behind the wheel on a weekly basis.

Now, the near-octogenarian is set to make his 1,000th career start in NASCAR’s top-three series after qualifying 31st for the NASCAR XFINITY Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

In five decades racing across NASCAR’s top-three series, he has 517 starts in what is now the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, the first of which came in 1970. He has 57 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series starts under his belt and will compete in his 426th NASCAR XFINITY Series race later today.

In his NASCAR career, he’s amassed a total of 19 wins, four of those came in Cup competition while the other 15 are XFINITY wins.

Shepherd will become the eighth driver to run at least 1,000 races across the top-three series. The other seven are Richard Petty, Mark Martin, Joe Nemechek, Kevin Harvick, Michael Waltrip, Terry Labonte and Jeff Burton.