Jeremy Clements has been racing, or around racing, for as long as he can remember.
Now, he’s nearing a milestone that’s sure to be even more memorable.
Clements, who currently sits in the Top 10 in the NASCAR Xfinity Series points standings after good showings at Daytona and Atlanta, will make his 500th career Xfinity Series start on Saturday at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. When the engines fire on Saturday, Clements will be 47 starts short of all-time series leader Kenny Wallace. Jeff Green is second with 535 starts, and Jason Keller is third with 520.
“They just told me I’ll be at 500 starts at COTA,” Clements said before the season. “And then it’s on to chase down that No. 1 all-time starts. I think I’ve got about a season and a half to go on that. We’re going to try to achieve that. We never set out for that, but since we’re so close we’re not gonna stop now. I love racing, and I hope to do it for a long time to come.”
He’s been at it for a long time already. He started racing go-karts when he was seven, but he’s been around the sport even longer.
“I remember when Jeremy was born,” Harrison’s founder Danny Harrison said. “I can remember his brother, Jason, and Kevin (Harrison) playing in the shop when we’d have a car there. Jeremy’s just a young tyke to my way of thinking, but he’s definitely a veteran in Xfinity.”
There’s certainly something to being one of “the old guys” in the Xfinity garage.
“It’s so weird,” Jeremy said. “There are a lot of younger kids coming in. We just did production day for CW (recently), and I think there are nine rookies coming in this year. There are a lot of young kids coming in who are going to be driving fast race cars. They’ll be hard to beat, but I’m sure they’re going to make some mistakes. I’ve learned a lot over the years, and hopefully I can use that to my advantage and be up front.”
Clements is also closing in on 50 career Top 10 finishes, and has two wins on the series. Racing as an independent team, it’s hard to overstate how much those mean to him.
“Winning at Road America, and then winning at Daytona, man, that’s just amazing,” he said. “Looking at those two wins are something that I’m very proud of. To win at a road course, first of all. I’m not a road course guy. I come from dirt track. And then winning at the most prestigious track in all of America, I would think, besides Indy. That’s cool.”
There are a ton of reminders of a successful past in Clements’ shop near Fairforest. Clements, however, is focused on the future.
“In the shop, we’ve got a lot of the dirt track trophies, so I see them,” he said. “Then I see a lot of the things from the NASCAR career. There’s a 300 start banner that a lot of people signed, and I look at it and think ‘Wow, we’re about to be at 500 now’. You look at a lot of those things and each of them are fun in their own way. But as a kid, watching racing on TV, NASCAR was where I wanted to be. I’m just fortunate and blessed to still be here and able to do it. This is tough. It’s hard to do this, to make it happen. It’s very hard to drive these race cars. I’m very fortunate that I can do it and have fun and be competitive at it, too.”