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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
NEMECHEK: No Stopping Us
With the next two weekends spent on the West Coast, we’re moving into one of the most grueling stretches on the schedule...
Joe Nemechek  | http://www.FrontRowJoe.com  |  Posted February 18, 2010   Charlotte, NC
The 2010 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season marks the 17th year of competition for veteran driver and team owner Joe Nemechek. (Photo: Ronald Martinez/Getty Images for NASCAR)
We’ve got an extra thing to do this week beyond what we had planned... okay, make that two things... repairing our torn-up NASCAR Nationwide and Sprint Cup Series superspeedway cars. Wrecks in last Saturday’s Nationwide race and Sunday’s Daytona 500 took us out of contention and put us up on jack stands here at the shop.

Now that we’ve got the haulers en route to Auto Club Speedway in Fontana for this weekend’s races, we can take a minute and get to rebuilding these superspeedway cars before Talladega rolls around. Both were heavily damaged and it will take a lot of time to repair them. We don’t have other Talladega cars to fall back on, so we’ll get these back in shape as quickly as possible. It certainly wasn’t the way we wanted to kick off the new season but we’re moving forward here at Nemco Motorsports, nonetheless.

We only have a total of 10 crew members in the shop working on both the Nationwide and Cup programs, so managing our time and resources is important. With the next two weekends spent on the West Coast, we’re moving into one of the most grueling stretches on the schedule. It’s a good thing that the “left coast” swing falls at the beginning of the year instead of later when everyone is worn out.

For the sake of time and money, our hauler will stay out West after the Fontana race and drive directly to Las Vegas for the next event. Plus, we will race our Fontana car at Las Vegas, which makes the decision to remain out there that much easier.

Although Daytona was a heartbreaker for us as far as the finishing order was concerned, the two weeks down there provided us with great opportunities for the business side of our organization. Daytona Speedweeks is crucial to the business aspect of racing because of the networking opportunities it provides. Daytona is our first and biggest race of the year. There is so much media and focus on the Daytona 500 that it becomes a great way to kick off the year both on and off the track.

We continue to meet with several companies about potential sponsorship on our car. This is an exciting time for me but also a stressful one. We have several positive things going on at our race shop that we’d like to showcase for the right company. And once we finally get that first company on board with our Cup team, they will see just how much they can benefit from having their colors and logo on our race car.

The companies on my Nationwide car at Daytona, England Stove Works, Inc.,
and D.A. B. Constructors, enjoyed a big uptick in website traffic following the Daytona race. They said their web hits were off the charts, and it meant a lot to me for them to say that sponsoring our car was some of the best money they had ever spent.

With a little luck and perseverance, we’ll have a group saying the same thing about our Cup car in the near future. Regardless of that situation or the disappointing end to our Daytona weekend, there is no stopping us. We’re committed to making this effort work and will do our best each week. As soon as we get a little bit of money behind us, I think you’ll see some huge gains.

Joe Nemechek, driver of the No. 87 Nemco Motorsports Toyota, celebrates his 17th season in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series in 2010. In 2009, he climbed behind the wheel of his own Cup car for the first time since 1996, making him one of a small number of current independent owner/drivers in NASCAR’s top division. Since his 1989 debut in the sport, the 1992 Nationwide Series champion has claimed four Sprint Cup and 16 NASCAR Nationwide Series victories. His uncanny knack for snagging pole positions earned him the nickname “Front Row Joe” years ago, and he has proven its validity by collecting 10 Sprint Cup and 18 Nationwide Series pole positions. Nemechek, 1990 Nationwide Series Rookie of the Year, was voted Most Popular Driver in ’92 and ’93. The Florida native cut his racing teeth in motocross at age 13, claiming more than 300 wins in six years, and since has gone on to post victories in every series in which he has competed. For more information on Nemechek, please visit www.frontrowjoe.com.

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Joe Nemechek

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