What he didn’t envision was perhaps a three-truck operation as soon as 2012.
But when team owners Kevin and DeLana Harvick opted to sell their organization’s equipment in June 2011, Sharp accelerated his plan, and as a result, Eddie Sharp Racing will field three trucks starting with the season-opening race in February.
“This is a huge jump and I have a tremendous amount of respect for that,” Sharp said after buying the assets to two KHI trucks in September. “But all of the lessons I’ve learned over the eight or nine years has been preparing me for this opportunity.
“This is an opportunity to do something positive, keep people working and put ourselves on the map where we need to be, where I fully intend to be. I’m not here just to be here. I want to make this a very successful, thriving team. I want to put ESR on the map and to utilize what KHI built is almost a no-brainer.”
Sharp hopes that his Eddie Sharp Racing will be talked about in the same conversations that included KHI and the likes of Kyle Busch Motorsports as far as the teams to beat in the trucks.
He will field three trucks in 2012 with Justin Lofton, Cale Gale and one other driver. Lofton won the 2009 ARCA title for Sharp and ended the 2011 season driving for Sharp after breaking away from Germain Racing.
“We’re here to compete for wins and compete for championships,” Sharp said. “I could have not made this big of a leap and we could have slowed everything down – and it would have been much more expensive and a much longer time frame to get where we want to be.”
