(born
June 30 ,
1957 in
Columbia, Tennessee ) is a
NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series driver who currently drives the #14 Waste Management
Chevrolet Monte Carlo for
MB2 Motorsports .
He is the son of former NASCAR driver
Coo Coo Marlin . Sterling was named after the
British Formula One legend
Stirling Moss . Outside of racing he enjoys watching
Tennessee Volunteers football and collecting Civil War artifacts. He is married to Paula and has a son, Steadman (who sometimes races in the Busch Series) and a daughter, Sutherlin. Steadman recently gave Sterling his first grandson.
Sterling was a three time track champion at the historic
Nashville Speedway USA (1980-1982).
His teammates are
Joe Nemechek (#01
U.S. Army ) and
Boris Said (#36). He currently has 10 NASCAR NEXTEL Cup series wins and has finished top ten in the year end point standings six times.
Sterling ran his first ever Winston Cup race in
1976 as a substitute for his injured father. However he did not participate in the series regularly until
1983 , where he was awarded the Rookie of the Year title.
Sterling's first career win came in his 279th career start at the
1994 Daytona 500 driving for
Morgan-McClure Motorsports in the #4 Kodak car. He went on to win the 500 in the following year, becoming only one of three drivers to win consecutive Daytona 500s. Sterling won two more times during the
1995 season and finished a career high third in the point standings, during a four-year run with Morgan-McClure Motorsports.
In 1998, he joined the
Felix Sabates operation, which had switched to Chevrolet, and had
Coors Light as its sponsor in the #40, and Joe Nemechek as teammate in the #42 BellSouth Chevrolet. Nemechek won once in 1999 before leaving.
Kenny Irwin was his teammate for 2000. Tragically, Irwin was killed in July 2000 during the
New England 300 , and was replaced by
Ted Musgrave with a new number -- #01 -- before being released late in the season.
In an unusual series of events at the end of 2000, the two Sabates teams switched sponsors. For the
Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500 in Hampton, GA, the final race of the season, #01 car sponsor BellSouth, based in nearby Atlanta, chose to switch cars with the #40, which has Coors Light. Busch Series driver Bobby Hamilton, Jr, in his second career start, would assume the #01 car, with Coors Light as sponsor, while sponsor BellSouth chose to side with the more experienced Marlin for their Peach Bowl scheme, making his #40 car the
BellSouth Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl Chevrolet for a race in their headquarters market.
In 2001
Chip Ganassi bought a controlling interest into the team Sterling Marlin was racing for. As well as the management change, the former Chevy based team switched over to Dodge.
Dodge had returned to
NASCAR that year after a long absence and Sterling scored their first win at
Michigan International Speedway in August. He went on to score another victory at
Lowe's Motor Speedway in October and equalled his best career finish in the points (third).
Marlin scored two victories early in the
2002 season at Las Vegas and Darlington. He lead the points standings for 25 straight weeks before his championship run was cut short by a neck injury in a crash at
Kansas Speedway . The team, however, did not bend.
Jamie McMurray stunned the field at the
UAW-GM Quality 500 by defending Marlin's title in just his second start. Marlin called the victorious McMurray on national television minutes after the stunning win, congratulating McMurray and the team in prime-time television. Marlin finished 18th in the final standings despite missing the final seven races, but the team finished eighth overall when points earned by substitute drivers Jamie McMurray and Mike Bliss in the races Marlin missed were added. (Some of NASCAR's prize money, and NASCAR's exemption policy on races are based on owner points, not driver points.)
Marlin left Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of the 2005 season and was replaced by
David Stremme . He joined MB2 Motorsports for 2006, and with the team looking for sponsors and a car number after previous sponsor Valvoline took driver and number to Evernham Motorsports, the team found one of its coprimary sponsors (Waste Management), and when the team was looking for numbers for its team, Marlin and MB2 agreed to #14, in honour of his father, who had died in August 2005, forcing him to miss one race.
". . . (T)o drive a car with the same number that my father drove makes the move even more special."
