Kevin Lepage has faced some tough times in his racing career. Times when he knew he didn’t have the equipment to run up front, when a top-10 finish was the most he could hope for. Times when he didn’t know where his next right-front tire came was coming from. Times when he and his wife, Donna, would scrounge through the couch cushions, hoping to find enough pocket change to finance a night out at the local pizza joint. No matter how bad it got, though, Lepage never lost faith.

Today, Lepage’s unshakable confidence is beginning to waver.

The Shelburne native started 35th in Saturday’s “EAS/GNC Live Well 300” Busch Series race at Daytona International Speedway, flirted with the top 10 midway in the event, then dodged a handful of late incidents to claim a solid, eighth-place finish. His earnings were $40,525, likely less than what it cost him to run the event. Worse still, his performance failed to catch the eye of a major sponsor, something Lepage desperately needs to continue his racing career.

Despite the fact that the Busch Series competes at Rockingham, NC this weekend; literally miles from the front door of his team’s shop, Lepage said that he will not be a part of the action.

"If I can’t find a sponsor soon, I’ll have to shut this deal down," said Lepage of his self-owned Busch Series operation. “It costs $20-$25,000 per race to lease an engine, another $10,000 for tires, and that’s just the start. God forbid you wreck the car.

"In the last three practices at Daytona, we were eighth, twelfth, and twelfth fastest; but we still couldn’t get anyone to come on board (as a sponsor),” said the former Vermont Milk Bowl champion. “There were guys out there who never cracked the top 30 all week who had million-dollar sponsorships. We had an eighth-place run at Daytona, and when you take out the guys that aren’t running for the Busch Series championship, we were more like fifth. I can’t understand why we can’t interest someone in sponsoring this team.”

Lepage said he needs a $50,000 sponsor to race at Rockingham this weekend. "We've got a lot of interest, but if I can't get something signed soon, I'll have no choice but to lay everybody off. I ran Daytona out of my own pocket, but I’ve seen too many guys bankrupt themselves trying to run `just one more race.’ I’m not going to put myself in that position. I can’t."

With southern sponsors in short supply, Lepage said he hopes someone from his home state might come to the rescue.

“There are some companies out there that are based in Vermont, but do business nationwide,” he said. “I’ve been taking to some of them, but in all honesty, there hasn’t been a lot of interest. That’s disappointing."

One of the few bright spots for Lepage this spring has been the support of Vermont and New England race fans.

“It’s been like a steady stream of people coming by the car,” said Lepage last week. “Some of them are people I met during my days on the American-Canadian Tour, but some of them are just folks from New England who come by to say `good luck.’ It’s encouraging to know that the fans are behind me and want to see us make a go of it. Unfortunately,” he laughed, ”none of them seem to own major corporations!”

Two years ago, it appeared that Lepage had finally grabbed racing’s brass ring. A spot in Jack Roush’s multi-car Winston Cup stable put him in top-notch equipment for one of the few times in his career, and had him pegged as a major star on the NASCAR horizon. The Roush deal never jelled, however, and last season saw the Shelburne driver bounce between three different Winston Cup teams, none of whom opted to retain him for 2002.

Today, Kevin Lepage is dancing on the edge of the blade. The coming days will go a long way toward determining whether Lepage can regroup and continue his NASCAR career, or whether he’ll become the latest in a long line of “whatever happened to” trivia questions.

He deserves better than that.

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While Lepage scrambles to keep his career afloat, Geoffrey Bodine appears to have resurrected his.

Two years after nearly losing his life in a terrifying NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Daytona, the Chemung, NY, veteran stepped back into the limelight last Sunday, steering an underfinanced, unheralded Ford to a third-place finish in the Daytona 500.

Now, that performance has earned the former Daytona 500 champion a four-race extension of his sponsorship deal with the Miccosukee Indian Gaming Commission, which backed his effort at Daytona. Bodine will now compete in the Daytona “Pepsi 400” in July, as well as at the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, plus one race at Talladega.

Bodine’s performance was one of the most heartwarming stories of Speedweek, except on TV, where it was largely ignored in favor of the Holy Trinity of Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Tony Stewart.

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…Officials of Thunder Road International Speedbowl have announced that their final points race -- Parts Plus Auto Parts day on Sunday, September 8 -- will feature a 100-lap Flying Tiger "Grand Slam" event. The Parts Plus race card could decide the 2002 Thunder Road Championships in all divisions.

…In a related story, the American Canadian Tour has sold 70 Late Model driver’s licenses to date, up 12% from a year ago. In addition, the series has already received 21 full-season ACT Dodge Tour entries. The roster contains four prior ACT titleholders, including defending ACT Dodge Tour champion Pete Fecteau of Morrisville, Airborne Raceway Late Model kings Mark Lamberton, Brent Dragon, Mike Bruno, Scott Carpenter and Chris Fisher, and recent Thunder Road titlists Cris Michaud, Tracie Bellerose, and Phil Scott.

Leading the list of confirmed 2002 ACT Rookie of the Year contenders are Ryan Moore of Scarborough, ME, an ACT Dodge Tour winner last year at his home track, Oxford Plains Speedway, last year’s NAPA Flying Tiger Series Champion, John Donahue of Graniteville, and Thunder Road Flying Tiger grad Corey Pittsley.

…The schedules are set for both Bear Ridge and Canaan Speedways. Promoter C.V. Elms, III, has put together a pair of calendars for the dirt ovals that run from early May into September.

Saturday, May 4, will mark the season opener at Bear Ridge in Bradford, with the Canaan, N.H. track set to open the following week, on Friday, May 10. Elms also announced that he will promote a race on the third-mile Canaan asphalt track on Sunday, June 16, with a multi-division card headlined by the NEDA Late Models.

Bear Ridge will open the season with its traditional day-long festivities on May 4, beginning with the annual Majestic Trophy Car Show at Bradford's Oxbow High School from 10-1. From there, the scene shofts to the speedway for open practice from 2-4 p.m., followed by the season-opening NAPA/Bradford Auto Parts card beginning at 6 p.m. At Canaan, practice day will be held on both the dirt and asphalt tracks on Sunday, May 5. Opening night's Brownie's Auto & Speed Parts event will go to post the following Friday, May 10, with action beginning at 7 p.m.

…Andy Petree is negotiating with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones to make Jones a part owner of Petree’s two-car Winston Cup operation next season.

Petree, who owns the #33 Chevrolet driven by Mike Wallace and the #55 of Bobby Hamilton, said last week at Daytona that he and Jones have been talking “for quite a while. We've kept it quiet until now, but it's hard to keep it quiet when we walk in here together. Jerry is a good man. We've spent a lot of time together, and we're looking forward to doing some things together."

After a solid run at Daytona, Petree has decided to run his unsponsored #33 this weekend at North Carolina Speedway. "We won the last Winston Cup race at Rockingham, and there are a lot of potential sponsors still looking at us,” said Petree. “That leads me to believe that the best thing we could do is run at least this race."

Wallace will remain in the car this weekend, though Petree would not commit to running the car after this Sunday, unless a sponsor is secured.