In recent weeks, Eric McClure has found himself having some things in common with the biblical Job. First, his home was badly damaged by a tornado that hit his hometown of Abingdon, Virginia and a run of bad racing luck knocked Eric out of the top 35. But through it all, Eric has stayed strong with the help of friends, family, and faith. While he might not be contending for wins or top 10′s on a frequent basis in the NASCAR Nationwide Series, no one can dare say that Eric McClure does not have his priorities in place. At Nashville SuperSpeedway in April, just before McClure’s home was hit by a tornado, I had the chance to sit down with him and talk about his racing career, his faith, and his family.

McClure has now been a part of NASCAR for nearly a decade, and while his family owned the famed Morgan-McClure Motorsports NASCAR Cup team, Eric didn’t have anything handed out to him, contrary to popular belief. “I always wanted to race growing up.” recalled Eric. “But, my parents weren’t sold on the idea and wanted me to get an education, so I went to college, worked for the local newspaper, the local radio station and swept floors at the race shop, saved up a bunch of money, went out and bought an old Street Stock, and that was it. I did well at it and had fun and Dad got excited about it. He made me pay for the whole thing, of course, but he let me live at home and did that for a few years and had the opportunity to do some testing for them (Morgan-McClure) and ran in a Busch race and it kind of snowballed from there. I got a really late start. It just started off as a hobby and it kind of took off.”

One thing Eric definitely did not have from his family was pressure to break into racing. “Honestly, I think they’d still like for me to quit (racing).” Eric stated. “Dad went every weekend and that was before air-planes and you had to drive the van all night. He worked a regular job in addition to the race team and he knew what it was really like. When everybody thinks about being a driver, they think it’s a glamour lifestyle. I always joke that when I became a driver, I never thought about being a 25th place guy or a 20th place guy. So no, there was no pressure at all and it was something I took on my own. They supported me with it and still do, but there’s no pressure.”

Eric had a rather early transition in his racing career to go from ARCA and local-level racing to racing in NASCAR and the learning curve was steep. “It was huge.” recalled Eric. “I liken it to going from the middle school football team straight to the NFL. We had one ARCA race, two Busch Series races, and a Cup race. Honestly, I did well in them, but I probably had no business being in there. I think that a lot of people don’t realize that when you get to these levels, and I didn’t either, that I was very fast at the local level and won a lot of races and was very successful, but it’s easy to look at others and think ‘Well, I can do that’ or ”These guys are terrible.’ and they get over here and you realize just how hard it is. These guys are the best of the best, the best of equipment, the best of drivers, the best of everything, and everyone at this level was the top dog at some track somewhere. But you don’t realize that when you get in here and if you’re like we were, and a lot of people are, that you come in with what is potentially a shoe-string budget with the exception of the first few races at Morgan-McClure where we had great equipment compared to the ARCA Series coming in figuring out how were we going to buy tires and how we were going to get to the track and how to get to the next race. You come in already behind the eight-ball. A lot of people don’t realize that and I certainly didn’t either, but I honestly did better then than I did as a full-time driver because I didn’t know what it was really all about. You come in and try to qualify for races and you’re geared up just to qualify. We came back and did a full-time deal and struggled for a couple of years, but we’re just now getting the ship righted. It’s the steepest tranisiton of anything I have ever done, but I’m one of the few people who got to do it, so it’s okay.”

Back in 2005, Eric started what has been a lengthy association with Hefty. “We literally started out with the bottom of the company and kept talking to people until we got in touch with the right people. We thought that was an opportunity where a company could get involved with the sport and at the time, we thought they were going to get involved with Morgan-McClure, but after two years, they gave us two races. And at that point we continued to actually do well in those few races and we made a Cup race and the right people were there and we were able to put together a program that made sense for them. They’re a company that’s more interested in how it benefits the brand than just being in the sport for the sake of it and that has been something that’s worked in our favor, but it’s just been relationships and it’s continued to grow and it’s been something new every day. It started out as a phone call and one meeting and ended up with 12 more meetings and a couple of races later, we ended up getting them on a full-time basis, so that was pretty cool.”

But the most important thing for Eric in his personal life is his relationship with God. He didn’t always know the Lord though. “My faith and my relationship with God is everything in my life and it’s number one.” said Eric. “I didn’t come to a relationship with Christ very easily. I grew up with my family being very successful in the latter part of my childhood and I grew up with anything in the world I could have ever wanted. I had nice clothes, went to the best schools, and drove nice cars. I played ball, I had everything in the world and I didn’t want for anything. I married a great girl and I was a miserable man. I was miserable on the inside and I was lonely. I knew there was a God, I was mad at him. My grandfather passed away, and he was the godliest man I ever knew. I was just a bitter kid, a smart-mouthed kid, and I was awful. Miranda invited me to church, and we went three times a week for a year and a half, which was interesting because I knew I wasn’t right with God and I didn’t have a relationship with him. I heard what they were saying and I just wanted to push it away, but God began to work on me and began to show me where I needed Him in my life. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to humble myself. I was 25 years old and I didn’t need anybody, I was a McClure and one day, He broke me. He showed me in my life where He was there, how much He loved me, and how much I needed Him in my life. I asked him for salvation and my life has been changed ever since then and I’ve been at peace all the time.”

In NASCAR, there are a good number of professing Christians, namely Morgan Shepherd, Michael McDowell, and Trevor Bayne just to name a few. But Eric is one of the more open ones about his faith and is not afraid to tell people how much God has worked in his life. “He’s done everything.” stated McClure. “I can’t look around here and say he hasn’t given me anything. You look around here and see these girls and my wife. I have a great family and I love them to death. I have happiness and joy every day. I get to do what I want to do for a living. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. But those are the most obvious blessings. You just look at everything in my life, to where He brought me to where I am now. People are like ‘Well, you know, you’re pretty easy-going.’ and it’s because of Him. It’s easy for me to get worked up about it and see what he’s done in my life. I look around in my life and see the things that I have been given. I have a great family and a good job, and I see that he’s directly responsible for me being in this ride. My career was done. I mean, we went to that last Talladega race and we knew that this was it. We had applied for jobs in different industries and we were just trying to figure out what we were going to do. We said that ‘We know that you’re behind this and we know that we’re going to serve You no matter what. What do You have for us?’ and two weeks later, I had a full-time sponsor. The obvious blessings are there, but in every-day life God’s always there. It’s just little things, we always get to have fun together. When things go wrong, we have a peace of knowing He’s there, so it’s hard to explain that. I get up and I get happy and get excited when things go horribly wrong, and He’s behind it and so there’s that peace and comfort of knowing he’s never going to leave me and share that with people. I don’t just walk out and advertise it, but when people look at me and see that and I hope that when they ask questions, I can give them answers and help them understand that if they don’t have that relationship, to see why it’s everything.”

On the race track, with the challenges drivers face on and off the track, it can be difficult for a Christian in NASCAR to keep their composure. But when you walk with God every day, as McClure has found out, it’s not so difficult. “It’s not that hard to walk with God on the race track.” McClure stated. “You have challenges in every day life, not just at the track, but in real life. He doesn’t promise that every day will be the easiest in the world. There’s going to be troubles in your life. Not just on the race track, but everywhere in life. I try to keep that in perspective. Maybe it works against me on the track. I don’t get really fired-up, mad at people because it’s not that big of a deal. Really, in my family, my sister should have been the driver because she has more attitude than I do. I get sad when I see people off the track, carrying on like they do, I just get emotional. You know, it’s not hard to walk with God. People think that ‘Oh, if this guy is a Christian, he has to be a saint.’, and while you strive for that you never can achieve it. I’m a human being, I get mad like everyone else. But when you get caught up in the heat of the moment, it’s not something that’s unforgivable that you have to be ashamed about because it’s human nature.”

But Eric’s not just a godly man, he’s a family man as well. And with the grueling NASCAR schedule, Eric still manages to maintain a successful family again. “This is everything to me.” Eric said as he motioned to his wife and three little girls. “This far surpasses racing. My dad, even with all the races he was at, he still only missed one game I was ever in. Even though he was always traveling, he always made time for us. We were number one to him. And the older we get, the harder it is to be away from them when they tell you they don’t want you to leave. Last week, my oldest daughter, Mabriegh, was crying when I left because she didn’t want me to go. And dude, it was heart-breaking. I’m a big softie anyway, kids will do that to you. I know I’m gone a lot, but when I’m home, I’m home for 24 hours. I’m gone three or four days a week. You miss them and you do anything you can with them. I’m blessed that when I get to be home with them so we try to do family things together. We watch TV, we camp out in the den and watch movies, we go to Chuck E. Cheese, and we go to Disney once a year. It’s things like that we’re blessed we get to do, but the sacrifice is for 150 days a year that they’re away from their daddy. But they have a great support system with Miranda and their grandparents on both sides. It’s probably harder on me than it is on them, so we try to make it up to them with me having this job and them knowing that this is what I always wanted to do. If it ever gets to a point where it takes away from them (my family), then this (racing) is over. Having kids was another life-changing moment for me. If you’re a good parent, your priorities change. I love the married life, I love having the kids, it changed everything for me. So it’s not hard to balance it. It’s fun. If I ever had a boy, I’d probably be in trouble. But with all girls… it’s cool. This is it.”

Back to Eric’s racing career, the one main constant thing in recent years is his relationship with Hefty. “I learned a lot from my family having Kodak all these years that this is a people business.” Eric reflected “It’s about how you treat people, whether it’s racing or the corporate world or anything else. Hefty can stay in this sport and participate in several different avenues but they’ve stayed with us for 6 years. There’s so many different phrases you could use, we under-promise & over-deliver, you always give them what they want. We understand that we can’t do what we do without them. While they want us to run well, they’re not in this sport just for us to run up front. We know what their desire is for a return on investment and we help them meet that. We have a program that works for them and they understand that and we always go the extra mile for them. A lot of these larger-teams charge a higher market rate, which is fine, to sponsor their teams because they feel it’s a privilege to sponsor their organization instead of it being a privilege for them to be with the sponsor. I’m not saying that’s the case for everybody, it’s just that we’re very blessed to have Hefty and that’s the truth for our little partners as well. We seem to have done all the right things because in the five years I’ve had this, in three of them we’ve run horribly bad. Despite the fact we haven’t had the performance that we want, they’ve stayed loyal to us because we do the things that they want us to do. It’s all a matter of relationships, and our company provides great relationships with sponsors. There’s a lot of sponsors that come into the sport and get a bad taste in their mouth & never come back, but we’re fortunate we haven’t lost one yet, so it’s fun.”

After a rough 2010 season, Eric jumped on board with TriStar Motorsports in 2011 and now finds himself as a team-mate to Mike Bliss and Jeff Green. “The relationship with TriStar is great.” said McClure. “We had a great year in 2009 (with Team Rensi Motorsports), but it’s just different here at TriStar. You’ve got Mark Smith, the owner, who doesn’t do this to make a living, he does this because he enjoys it. From Mark Smith to the last guy in the shop, everyone cares about what’s going on. I think for me, having that support has been good. It’s no secret that we’re not the highest-funded team in the series, but it’s not something we advertise or shy away from. They give us what we need to come to the race track and that’s been a blessing. I’m surrounded with good people that want to help me. Coming in, they knew what my track record was but that didn’t scare them away. They embraced it and took it as a challenge. I also have great team-mates, and I’m finally happy to the point that I don’t care what other people think. I care about Eric for once and Tri-Star is a place that has allowed us to put our best foot forward.”

McClure also has this season one advantage he didn’t previously enjoy in having team-mates in Mike Bliss and Jeff Green. “They have been immensely valuable to me.” Eric said. “I ask them both about a hundred questions a week and they help me set up car to help me with the feeling before the race. They’ve made me faster, no doubt about it. It’s been a good situation where in the past, a second car has been brought out to make the race team look good, and that’s not the case here with a second car.”

At the end of the day, Eric is absolutely down-to-earth on what he wants his legacy to be when he walks away from racing. “I want to be remembered as someone who was a great man of God and a family man, because to me, that’s what matters the most. Stuff on this earth isn’t so important. What matters to me is being the best I can be for God and my family and if the fans can remember me for that, then I’d be happy.”