Never give up: Persistent Jeremy Clements reaches Xfinity mark

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — In the 5,000-square foot store that has been house to Jeremy Clements’ racing occupation since he began riding go-karts at age 7, a couple of cabinets show off trophies from his adolescence.

Stacked three-deep in some puts, they occupy about each and every inch at the 8-foot-long cabinets. The trophies displayed are a fragment of the {hardware} he’s earned racing.

“It’s pretty damn cool to look at them,” Clements, a third-generation racer, tells NBC Sports in a short lived second of mirrored image. “They’re old now.”

MORE: Details for Saturday’s Xfinity race

But simply as particular.

That’s the message the 38-year-old Clements informed a nephew sooner or later, announcing, “You keep those trophies. One day you’re going to look at them like I do and reminisce about them.”

Most of Clements’ time is targeted ahead, even though, ensuring his family-owned group has what it wishes for the following race. That will also be the rest from portions for the auto to shuttle plans. At Joe Gibbs Racing, Richard Childress Racing and Kaulig Racing — groups that experience blended to win 16 of the 22 Xfinity races this season — a driving force is taken with simply riding. Clements doesn’t have such luxurious or such luck.

Still, he helps to keep racing.

Saturday, Clements will make his 454th occupation Xfinity Series get started, shifting previous Joe Nemechek and Morgan Shepherd to 5th at the all-time listing.

It’s simple to skip over this milestone as a result of Clements, who’s 93 begins from the best-ever report held through Kenny Wallace, isn’t the sequence headliner that John Hunter Nemechek, Austin Hill or Justin Allgaier are.

In his 453 earlier Xfinity begins, Clements has two wins. While that may be seen as a testomony to what he and his group have accomplished without a Cup association, the truth is that almost all races he enters, his possibilities of profitable are slender.

With the entire luck he had racing at native brief tracks — he used to be so dominant that two tracks put bounties on him for somebody that might beat him — it’s simple to marvel why he continues to compete within the Xfinity Series. How may somebody stay competing when victory is so uncommon?

No excuses

Justin Allgaier has run 26 fewer Xfinity races than Clements however their paths diverge from there.

Since final season, Allgaier has two times as many wins, 4 occasions as many peak fives and just about as many top-10 finishes as Clements has in his Xfinity occupation.

Allgaier, who has recognized Clements from ahead of their time within the Xfinity Series, admires the tenacity Clements and his father, Tony, need to proceed racing in NASCAR’s No. 2 sequence.

“They’re not willing to give up on the dream,” Allgaier informed NBC Sports.

That pressure has helped Clements make the playoffs the previous two years. He’ll want to win one of the most last 4 races within the common season to make the playoffs. His subsequent probability comes Saturday at Watkins Glen (3:30 p.m. ET on USA Network). The sequence then is going to Daytona. Clements is the protecting race winner there.

Each 12 months, the problem grows for Xfinity groups no longer aligned with Cup organizations. They don’t have the assets, manpower and steadily investment to compete in opposition to the larger groups for victories at many tracks.

Clements’ highest end this season is 14th at the Circuit of The Americas street path. His most up-to-date top-10 end got here 32 races in the past in his win at Daytona final 12 months.

“He’s in between maybe some of the top mega teams, but he’s still well above the real small teams,” Allgaier mentioned of Clements. “That’s a hard place to be. It’s a hard place to be in year after year after year.”

While the Clements relations’s race engine trade is a hit within the brief observe ranks, Tony Clements has made it transparent he gained’t fund his son’s racing to the detriment of the trade. The group has a couple of sponsors however nonetheless stays one of the most smaller organizations.

“We can sit back and holler this little team deal all we want,” Tony Clements informed NBC Sports. “We can make that excuse, if we need us an excuse or crutch or something, but if we realize we have opportunity facing us … and address it accordingly and give him a chance, give him a chance to win, he’ll win.

“You’ve got to put him in position to win. We’re not able every week to put him in a position to win. We can only put him in position to win on occasions. Road courses seem to be more of that possibility because they put more in the driver’s hands at those tracks. You go to Charlotte, you go to Texas, you go to Kansas, you better have a hot rod.”

That’s harder for Clements’ group to offer as a result of the restricted assets.

Clements’ group is primarily based out of a store in-built 1974 through his grandfather Crawford, an engine builder who additionally used to be a group leader for wins through Junior Johnson, Buck Baker and A.J. Foyt within the early Nineteen Sixties. The construction isn’t sufficiently big to retailer all 8 of the group’s vehicles directly.

Years in the past, Tony Clements purchased the land around the side road as he seemed forward to the long run.

“If we acquired a big enough sponsor, we could build a Cup shop or something like that,” Tony Clements mentioned.

The land stays undeveloped.

New alternative each and every week

So why do that? Why move into many races understanding the percentages are stacked in opposition to you after which move do it the following week and subsequent week and subsequent week?

“It’s tough to answer,” Clements says, sitting on a rolling storage seat between the group’s pull down rig and one among his vehicles. “You get definitely down a lot because you beat yourself up. You’re just beat up when you know you can do it, run up front.

“You’re here doing it on your own. It’s tough to get top-15 finishes, let alone win. Even though we’ve done it twice. I’d love to do it more obviously.

“It’s very taxing on your well-being, your head. You wreck a car, it sets you back. Just all of it. It will wear you down. But … (there’s) a new opportunity every weekend to go out there and show what you can do.”

But Clements additionally is aware of he’s lucky to be on this spot. While competing in at 311 Speedway in Madison, North Carolina, in July 2004, the driveshaft broke on his automobile and a work of metal tore in the course of the automobile and struck him. His proper hand used to be just about severed.

He used to be rushed to Wake Forest University Baptist Hospital and underwent a nine-hour surgical procedure. It will be the first of 10 surgical procedures he had on his hand. Doctors informed Clements he would no longer race once more.

“They’re smart people, but they’re wrong,” Clements mentioned. “I just said (to them), ‘You just need to make it where I can grip a wheel. I’m racing somehow, someway.”

He misplaced a 12 months of racing to get well however returned in 2005. He competed in make a choice ARCA races in 2006-08.

In 2008, Clements did some trying out for Joe Gibbs Racing and certified Kyle Busch’s Xfinity automobile at Kentucky Speedway when Busch used to be competing somewhere else.

“It was stupid fast,” Clements mentioned of Busch’s automobile. “I just remember thinking, ‘So this is what it’s like to drive for a big team. Wow, this was a lot easier.’”

While he was hoping the ones alternatives may result in extra rides, it didn’t.

He went full-time Xfinity racing in 2011. Clements had not more than two top-10 finishes in each and every of the following 4 seasons.

Clements scored his first sequence win in 2017 in his 256th sequence get started, taking the checkered flag at Road America.

“If we gave up, we’d have never been in that position,” Clements mentioned of the Road America victory. “(You) keep working hard and hopefully we have that shot again.”

That second — and the hope it brings — can energy one in the course of the past due hours on the store solving a automobile or getting able for the following race.

The reminiscence of when he walked at the constitution airplane for Xfinity groups together with his father after that Road America win stays contemporary. Everyone on board clapped and high-fived him.

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His 2d victory got here final 12 months at Daytona in triple time beyond regulation — 5 years to the day after the Road America victory.