Kevin Parker, a long time short track racer from Basset, Virginia, is making his tenth attempt to make the field of Sunday’s Virginia Credit Union 300. That’s right, his tenth.

It’s been a dream for Parker to make the Martinsville field for ten years, and it would be nothing short of a “dream come true” for him if he made it into the field this weekend.

“I laughed, I told my guys yesterday, I said ‘you know, we get in, come Monday morning, I’m gone buy all of you a clock.’ You know, we just laugh about it, but it’s just so hard, man. I mean, I’m a low-budget team from seven miles up the road. We’ve been so close here, and emotions are high today, you can tell. But it would mean a lot. We’ve worked hard,” he said as tears welled in his eyes.

His heart is on his sleeve this weekend, and he admits it too. He understands the emotional toll this race is going to take on him. He’s racing this race for one of his dear friends who is extremely ill and cannot make it to the track to see Parker attempt to make the field.

Parker is confident in his equipment this year. He claims that his Chevrolet was really fast in practice and he was “right there in the meat of them.” He also feels he can battle the attrition this race has to offer.

“Last year, I got screwed…Well, the year before that, I missed it by one car. So, I’ve been chunkin on that door, so I’m going to buckle in that thing, pull my helmet down real tight, and tell the good Lord ‘come one, ride with me man, let’s get this thing in here.’ Maybe 10 in 10 will work out this time. So, I don’t know man, we’ll see,” Parker explained. “There’s a lot of good cars here. There’s a lot of money. I just, I’ve been laughing. I’ve been walking up and down pit road, you know, watching these teams and it’s just amazing with the money that people got in these cars. We’ve got a little shop behind my house that is just enough to put my car in, but it’s grassroots racing. That’s what we really are. We’re grassroots racing.”

“We’re going to do the best we can do. I’m really proud of my team. I really am, so we’ll just see what we got.”