J.D McDuffie never won a race or a championship, but he was a staple of the Sprint Cup Series for three decades.
The record holder with 653 starts without a win, McDuffie will be honored by Landon Cassill and Front Row Motorsports with a paint scheme for the Sept. 4 Southern 500.
The paint scheme was used by McDuffie in the 70s and 80s, though he first competed in the Cup series in 1963. Beginning in 1966, the Sanford, North Carolina, native and independent owner/driver competed in at least one race every year until his death in a crash at Watkins Glen International in 1991.
“J.D. was a guy who just kept scrapping, week after week, and earned a lot of good finishes as a result,” Cassill said in a press release. “(Team owner) Bob Jenkins likes to say that Front Row Motorsports is the team that does more with less. You can definitely say that J.D. McDuffie did the same thing, and we’re proud to honor his memory at Darlington.”
McDuffie earned 12 top fives in his 27 years of Sprint Cup racing, including a fifth-place finish at Darlington in the 1973 Rebel 500. Also in the top five that day were race winner David Pearson and Bobby Allison, driving paint schemes that will join McDuffie’s on Sept. 4, driven by Ryan Blaney and Tony Stewart.
JD McDuffie was a blue-collar independent racer, someone FRM relates to. He was killed in a crash at @WGI in 1991. pic.twitter.com/zZlKA4HnJd
— Front Row Motorsports (@Team_FRM) August 23, 2016