JOLIET, IL - Missing his third race in four weeks was hard to take Friday night for Morgan Shepherd and his disappointed Faith Motorsports crew.
Trying to keep up with those having money has always been hard, but the difficulties that forced Faith from Sprint Cup to the second-tier Nationwide Series is becoming more evident even in the lower series.
"I was talking with a team owner after qualifying about how his cars ran so well," Shepherd said. "He talked about how when they had the cars on the shaker rig what they were able to find and how much better it made them. Our cars have never seen a shaker rig and probably never will."
Shepherd said most teams, even single-car owners with sponsorship, have their own engine and chassis dynos while his Faith-based program doesn't usually know what they have until they unload at the track.
"We have more help this year than we have had in quite a few years, but we still don't have sponsorship to speak of like most of these teams do," Shepherd said. "They were talking on TV about how the new Car of Tomorrow will save Nationwide teams money by keeping them from having to spend money on wind-tunnel testing. We have never had enough money to even think of taking a car to a wind tunnel."
Shepherd said the team's only way to try to keep with those who have it is to attempt to do it the old fashioned way.
"We'll go to Virginia this week and test and try to get the car set up for Gateway," he said. "That costs money we don't have too, but we have to do something. Everyone else is getting better and we're not so we have to do everything we can to try to keep up."
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