“NASCAR” Rick Mast Signed Upper Deck Embossed Trading Card Todd Mueller COA

Description

Up for auction “NASCAR” Rick Mast Signed Upper Deck Embossed Trading Card.
This item is certified authentic by Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their Certificate of Authenticity.
ES-6892
Richard K. Mast
(born March 4, 1957) is a former
NASCAR
driver. He competed in both the
Winston Cup
(now
Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series
) and
Busch Series
(now
Xfinity Series
) before retiring in 2002. He holds a
business administration
degree from
Blue Ridge Community College
.
Mast ran thirteen races for
Mach 1 Racing
in 1989, finishing sixth at the
Daytona 500
in an unsponsored car,
which Mast called his proudest achievement in racing. He still believes he would have won had his team been willing to gamble on fuel mileage. Mast ran selected races in 1990 for
D.K. Ulrich
before finishing the year with
Travis Carter Motorsports
.
In
1991
, Mast signed to drive the No. 1
Skoal Classic
-sponsored
Oldsmobile
for Richard Jackson's
Precision Products Racing
.
He started out the season by leading fourteen laps in the
Daytona 500
and finished fourth.
He had three top-tens and finished 21st in points. That year, the
Talladega Superspeedway
produced a couple of highlights for Mast. In the
Winston 500
, he pushed a fuel-deficient
Harry Gant
(driving for
Leo Jackson
, Richard's brother) during the final lap of the race, helping Gant win (Mast was one lap down in tenth). This action is prohibited after the white flag by NASCAR rules, regardless of who the individual drivers are, but he was not fined money or points. With less than 25 laps to go in the
DieHard 500
, Mast was tapped by
Buddy Baker
entering the
tri-oval
and flipped over. He slid to a stop a few hundred feet beyond the start-finish line and soon climbed out of the car, much to the delight of the crowd. He was not injured, but half-jokingly said afterwards, "I'm okay but I need another pair of underwear".
The next year
, Mast won his first career Cup pole at the final race of the 1992 season, the
1992 Hooters 500
, which was
Richard Petty
's final race,
Jeff Gordon
's first race, and the day that
Alan Kulwicki
won the championship by one race position over
Bill Elliott
.
Mast's race ended on the first lap in a crash.
The team switched to
Ford
in
1993
. Mast had a career year in
1994
, with ten top-ten finishes and a career-high-tying eighteenth,
finishing a career-best second at
Rockingham Speedway
, a race where he slid sideways while racing side-by-side with winner
Dale Earnhardt
coming out of the final corner.
In August of that season, he won the
pole position
at the inaugural
Brickyard 400
at the
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
(a race for which 90 cars were entered), finishing eighteenth in points.
In comparison,
1995
was disappointing for Mast, with only three top-tens. Skoal left at the end of the season, and
Hooters
replaced them, as the team switched to
Pontiac
. He had three top-tens late in the year, but when the season came to a close, he and Hooters left PPR.