NASCAR The faith of NASCAR drivers comes in all horsepowers. Yet few competitors can match the level of public Christian commitment geared toward a love for motorsports shown by redheaded sparkplug Morgan Shepherd. He has started more than 500 Sprint Cup events, and has at times even changed his own tires and filled his own gas tank to stay in the race. He unashamedly called his truck team "Victory in Jesus Racing."

The cops never caught up with Shepherd, son of a successful moonshiner, while he was growing up in 1940s-era North Carolina. By 1970, Shepherd had swapped the family still for racing. But the alcohol that launched his NASCAR career was killing his liver and his marriage. He came home from the 1975 Daytona 500 to find that his fed-up wife had stomped out. After a drunken, live-it-up bender with a girlfriend, Shepherd took an honest look at himself. He prayed for God to turn his life around. Over time, he determined that NASCAR would become both his mission field and a platform for ministry to the church.

In 1980, Shepherd won what today is the Nationwide championship (the sport's second-tier series). In NASCAR's top Sprint Cup Series (formerly Winston Cup), Shepherd won four races. Up until the mid-1990s, he perennially landed in the top-10 end-of-year standings. At age 51, he became the second-oldest winner of a Sprint Cup race.
Then, in 1998, hard times set in. A sponsorship deal went south, which, alongside other financial difficulties, wiped out Shepherd's fortune. He wondered: Without that weekly appointment on tracks across the country, who would listen to his testimony? Shepherd persevered, and today on the lower profile Nationwide circuit, he drives NASCAR's ultimate branded vehicle: the candy-apple green Racing with Jesus #89 Dodge.
Back in 2002, NASCAR was not as friendly to such religious endorsements. That
year, Shepherd showed up at a truck race with a brightly colored Jesus logo on his hood. NASCAR officials got complaints and ordered him to remove it—which put many fans, religious or otherwise, in an uproar. A few races later, officials told Shepherd he could put it back.

Some criticize NASCAR management for allowing chaplains to pray over loudspeakers in the name of Jesus at official races, which critics contend will make Jews and Muslims feel unwelcome. And many Christians themselves are ill at ease with NASCAR's family-and-faith marketing campaigns when the goal seems to be big profits, and when many NASCAR advertisers come from the alcoholic beverage industry. "[NASCAR] is just like America: open for business. You can't put them down for that," Shepherd tells me in the lounge of his car hauler. Even so, Shepherd observes, "There are things in it I don't like—the alcohol and such."

Shepherd decided long ago to refuse sponsorships from producers of harmful products. Shepherd, at 66 by far the oldest driver, found that getting angry or refusing sponsorships was not accomplishing enough.
Since 2001, Shepherd has created the racing teams Victory in Jesus Racing and Victory Motorsports, and today co-owns Faith Motorsports. Shepherd has had a handful of investors support these teams. He believes Christians in business have real power to change NASCAR by sponsoring cars. "We don't have enough people to stand up and put our cars on [NASCAR] locations," says Shepherd.

Funding a champion team takes millions. In the last decade, Shepherd's funding has come primarily through small sponsorships, fan donations, and prize money. For years, the necessary $10,000 for tires to finish a race fell well outside his budget. Shepherd did well just showing up on race day.

But in April in Talladega at a Nationwide event, the first race he completed since 2004, he led one lap and finished 13th. After the race, Shepherd congratulated Talladega winner Tony Stewart, who later featured Shepherd on a radio broadcast. "You had an awesome run this weekend," Stewart said to Shepherd, who replied, "I know—you looked in the mirror and saw [my] big ole yellow Jesus logo and said, 'Jesus is after me!'"

On NASCAR.com, Stewart said fans should appreciate Shepherd. "They don't understand that years ago he used to be one of the top guys in the Cup Series."
Earlier this year, driver Kevin Harvick, who won the 2007 Daytona 500, built Shepherd a car and gave it to him. The Hot Lap fan website started a "chip in" fund for Shepherd's tires. Stewart is also supplying tires.

The enthusiasm Shepherd generates is having an influence up and down the NASCAR food chain. They have made Shepherd a true competitor again—and Shepherd is grateful. "I get to have fun serving the Lord with what I love to do," he says. "I really love racing. But I love the Lord, and that's the reason his name is on the car."