Shelburne native lands spot in Vermont Hall of Fame

Native Shelburnite Kevin Lepage’s need for speed landed him a spot this year in the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame.

One of 12 inductees for 2024, he’s the only Vermont-born stock car driver to compete at the highest levels of NASCAR.

But for the self-proclaimed “car nut,” his love for cars is something that seemingly runs in his blood. His dad, a mechanic and local gas station owner, started drag racing in Milton in the 1960s around the time Lepage was 3 years old.

“I just fell in love with his drag car and my mom used to say that I used to cry and throw a fit when he used to leave with the car because we weren’t able to go with him,” he said.

For Lepage, the need to be close to the action started in adolescence. He recounts being 8 years old, sneaking into the pit area with his dad and then watching the races from the highest grandstand.

But winning his first heat in his home state of Vermont all those years ago is ultimately what sparked an illustrious career that would ultimately move him up to the prestigious Winston Cup series.

“I would just watch the cars and I just loved racing. When I got my first race at Catamount, I won my heat race and I think I finished 10th in the feature and that’s where it all started. I wanted to be one of those guys, that when I’m sitting 60, 70, 80 years old with my grandkids, I wanted to be the guy that would say, ‘We took a gamble, and we made it.’”

In the mid-70s, his dad bought a car for Lepage’s older brother, who started racing at Catamount and Barre’s Thunder Road until Lepage took over in 1980, when he was Rookie of the Year that year.

“I missed the overall Rookie of the Year for the tour and finished second to Leland Kangas out of Maine,” he said.

Lepage had a successful run on short track in Vermont, including Thunder Road, where he won three Milk Bowls, one of the country’s toughest short-track races.

“To win the Milk Bowl three times in that era, that’s a such a tough race to win one but to win it three times. It was really good,” Lepage reflected. “It was just one of them days that I couldn’t do anything wrong with the car and the car was just flawless and to beat Mark Martin and Terry Labonte, that was a very special day for me.”

He left Vermont in 1994 for the NASCAR Xfinity circuit, competing in 350 races with 19 top five finishes, 51 top 10s and he posted two wins at Homestead and Bristol on NASCAR’s second-level tour.

“I was really good friends with John Sortino who started Vermont Teddy Bear Company and he came into my shop one day and I said, ‘Hey, John, I said, I’ve got a proposition for you.’ I told him that I wanted to go NASCAR racing and I needed Vermont Teddy Bear sponsorship. After some meetings, we put a deal together and we came down to North Carolina and started a race team and it’s where my career started down here,” he said.

Although he could have stayed up North, the goal was to be a Winston Cup driver, he said.

“At the time when I moved, I was in my early 30s and that was a young driver to make it into the Winston Cup,” he said.

He raced 13 years in the Winston Cup Series starting in 1997 and compiled two top five finishes and nine top 10s. In his first full season in 1998, he qualified for 27 of the 33 races he entered. Between the Winston Cup series and the Busch series, Lepage has run over 560 races in his career.

“Looking back at my Winston Cup career, over 201 races,” he said. “We easily could have won five or six of those races. I can go back and replay them in my mind that maybe we had a bad pitstop, or just something happened. It was a great career and I’m not disappointed at all that I didn’t win a Winston Cup race.”

He paid homage to his home state when he retired by completing his final race at the Milk Bowl in 2017, the place where his career began.

“Never forget where you came from,” he said. “Anytime there’s any publications or any media stuff that I had to do throughout my career, you know, I was always, ‘Kevin Lepage, from Shelburne, Vermont.’”