Competitive Edge Motorsports
Competitive Edge Motorsports closed in 2006.
Joe Auer is the principle owner of Competitive Edge Motorsports, a team that was once a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series team. Joe has been involved with sports on a whole for nearly 50 years and is well remembered as an outstanding pro football player for the NFL. Auer was the one who took the opening kickoff in the first game Miami Dolphins had ever competed in. From there he became the dolphins first MVP. His pro career saw Auer play for the Atlantic Falcons and Buffalo Bills in various seasons. Later he turned his attention to car racing.
Joe Auer has been involved with racing for over 3 decades and continues to enjoy it. Auer also has interests in things besides sport and is owner and president of ICN, a very successful global technology consulting and training firm, which he founded in 1975. Competitive Edge Motorsports made its debut at the Coca-Cola 600 in 2004 with driver Kevin Lepage fielding the #51 Marathon Oil Chevrolet. Lepage finished 43rd at the race because of his car suffering from overheating failures. Lepage ran another four more races but with out much success, resulting in DNF’s for all of them. With the team not doing to well CEM had to replace Lepage with Tony Raines who from there took over as driver for the team. He finished 28th at Dover, his best finish out of all his races he had taken on so far.
The year 2005 saw another change in driver, with ARCA racer Stuart Kirby taking over. Kirby qualified for a total of seven races, with his best point position being 31st. The following year Mike Garvey drove for the CEM team but with four finishes all of which were 38th position or worse, left Marathon Oil, the sponsor, no choice but to move to Petty Enterprises. Competitive Edge Motorsports had full intentions of having the team perform full time in 2007 but that was not to happen. Later that year the team was made to fold and sell its equipment when it was unable to find alternative sponsorship to fund it.