Timothy Peters' feel-good story comes to AMS
Jamie McMurray’s heartwarming win in the Daytona 500 in his first points-paying Sprint Cup race after being released from Roush Fenway Racing at the end of the 2009 season wasn’t the only feel-good story to come out of Speedweeks.
Timothy Peters’ dramatic last-lap victory in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Daytona also was the culmination of a classic good-guy-overcomes-great-odds saga.
To fully appreciate the story of Timothy Peters, the truck-series points leader heading into Saturday’s E-Z-GO 200 at Atlanta Motor Speedway, one has to go back just a year. This time in 2009, Peters, a 29-year-old from Providence, N.C., was clawing his way along the comeback trail after being released from his job driving Nationwide Series cars for Richard Childress Racing.
It wasn’t the first time he had to pick up the pieces and start over. In 2001, Peters was still racing Late Models when his father, and biggest supporter, died of a massive heart attack at age 53.
Peters accomplished his most recent comeback in a fashion that many thought was no longer possible. He started by selling his father’s Corvette to finance his return to the truck series. Early last year, he prepared his cars in a residential-style, two-bay garage behind a friend’s house in Danville, Va. He had one full-time crew member besides himself and relied on friends to do the jobs that full-time mechanics do on other teams.
Still he managed to hang onto a spot in the top 10 in points. His perseverance under trying circumstances caught the attention of Tom DeLoach, owner of the Red Horse Racing team. DeLoach put Peters behind the wheel of one of his trucks, and Peters rewarded him almost immediately with a win at Martinsville Speedway, Peters' home track.
Then came the big win at Daytona in the truck series’ premier event. Even truck series veteran Todd Bodine, who was beaten by Peters at the line at Daytona, was proud to see the youngster holding the big trophy.
“A kid like Timothy [Peters], he’s got such a future in our sport,” Bodine said after finishing second at Daytona. “He’s one of those kids that, with the right break, would be sitting over in a Cup garage right now. He’s that good, that good a kid. That’s how much I respect him.”
Peters, despite his recent success, seems as humble as ever, still taking phone calls to his cell phone from reporters just as he did in the days when he was almost begging for publicity.
“I’ve been very blessed,” he said. “My mom and dad worked hard and went into debt so I could race like a rich kid. I leaned on my dad for a lot of things, and I might not have made some of the decisions I made if he was still here.”
But he has managed to get himself in a spot he likes, career-wise, and he hopes to carry the momentum from Daytona into Atlanta.
“We’re running Chassis No. 138, and I have the most confidence in it of any truck we have,” he said. “I’m looking forward to picking up where we left off in Daytona.”
Although he won't say he’s ready to knock off Kyle Busch, who has won four of his five career truck starts at Atlanta, he does believe a top-five finish is possible, and his main goal is to win the season championship.
“Tom DeLoach and Red Horse Racing have given me the resources I need to make that happen,” Peters said.
Even though Bodine and others say he could have a future in the Sprint Cup garage, Peters said he’s not in a hurry to abandon the team that resurrected his career.
“They’re like my family,” he said. “Tom DeLoach gave me an awesome opportunity when other people really weren’t looking at me.
“If I had the right opportunity, I might look at [Cup], but I’m really happy where I am right now.”
