After a promising career seemed to be on the verge of taking off to the big time, the Bowling Green, Kentucky driver just disappeared.
“I probably got myself in the wrong situations for my racing career to take off like I hoped it would,” said 28-year-old Kirby, who lives with his wife and six-month old daughter in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
“Everything I did was on a part-time basis. What I needed to do was get hooked up with someone so I could run a full season somewhere, get all the experience I could, and then take gradual steps.”
But that’s not the way it happened for Kirby, who first landed on the ARCA RE/MAX Series tour in 2001 with veteran car owner/crew chief Bob Schacht. Despite his part-time tenure, the Kirby-Schacht combo was a threat right off the truck at Daytona where they qualified fourth and finished fifth.
Although their appearances were sporadic, they were, nonetheless, always contenders. In just a handful of starts over three years, Kirby posted runner-up finishes at Kansas and Charlotte as well as third place finishes at Michigan and Pocono, and a fourth at Atlanta. They rarely finished out of the top-five. Ironically, Kirby also broke his boss Schacht’s longstanding one-lap qualifying record at Pocono. Over 13 career starts total, Kirby and Schacht earned three pole awards – two at Pocono and one at Chicagoland. These guys meant business.