PHOTO: Larry Scavnicky, Front Stretch Photos
SEASON IN REVIEW
Naples, Florida driver Joe Nemechek picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 2008, scoring three last-place finishes in thirty-two starts during a thirty-six-race season. Nemechek won a bottom-five tiebreaker over A.J. Allmendinger, 9-6.
Nemechek was competing in his sixteenth season of Cup Series competition, a career that saw him race for ten different teams. He began as an owner-driver and the 1992 NASCAR Busch Series Champion, and in 1993 brought his NEMCO Motorsports team to the Cup Series. His debut came in a 36th-place run in the inaugural Slick 50 300 at Loudon, New Hampshire on July 11, 1993, when his #87 Dentyne Chevrolet broke a rocker arm.
After two races for Morgan-McClure Motorsports toward the end of 1993, Nemechek ran his first full Cup season for Larry Hedrick in 1994, finishing 27th in points with his first Top Five and three Top Tens, including a career-best 3rd in the Miller Genuine Draft 500 at Long Pond, Pennsylvania on June 17, 1994. At season’s end, he narrowly lost Rookie of the Year to Jeff Burton.
In 1995, Nemechek brought NEMCO Motorsports back to the Cup Series, running two seasons with full-time sponsorship from Burger King. The results were mixed, however, as he finished 28th and 34th in points those two years, but finished 4th in the MBNA 500 at Dover, Delaware on September 17, 1995.
1997 saw Nemechek move to the Felix Sabates-owned SABCO Racing Team, where he’d replace a departing Kyle Petty as driver of Sabates’ flagship #42. Carrying Nemechek’s full-time sponsor BellSouth, which followed him from the Busch Series, Nemechek slowly showed signs of improvement, scoring three top-ten finishes in 1997 and then improving to one Top Five and four Top Tens in 1998. Though he still struggled to find consistency, Nemechek scored five poles in his three seasons for Sabates, earning him the nickname “Front Row Joe.” On paper, Nemechek’s final season with Sabates in 1999 was another difficult year, but his 30th position in points mattered little after he won his first Cup race that season in his 180th career start. The victory came September 19, 1999 at Loudon, New Hampshire - the scene of his first Cup start - where he started 11th and led 72 laps on his way to an emotional victory.
Nemechek moved to Andy Petree Racing in 2000, replacing Ken Schrader as driver of another flagship car, the #33 Chevrolet. With longtime sponsor Skoal Tobacco blocked by recent Federal legislation, the #33 carried a new look for the first time in nearly two decades, carrying the blue-and-white colors of sponsor Oakwood Homes. Nemechek’s first season with Petree earned him the best points finish of his career - 15th - with three Top Fives, nine Top Tens, and another pole the day Dale Earnhardt scored his 76th and final career win October 15, 2000 in Talladega, Alabama. In 2001, Nemechek scored Petree’s final Cup win as an owner, leading 196 laps at Rockingham, North Carolina en route to victory in the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 on November 4, 2001. Just as in 1999, Nemechek left the team at season’s end to drive the #26 Fords fielded by Haas-Carter Motorsports, replacing Jimmy Spencer.
Unfortunately, the financial instability of the Haas-Carter sponsor K-Mart led to Nemechek’s departure from the team just ten races into the 2002 season. Following some relief driving for an injured Johnny Benson, Jr. At the Nelson Bowers team, Nemechek then got a ride with Hendrick Motorsports, taking over for the fired Jerry Nadeau in the #25 UAW-Delphi Chevrolet. As his wild 2002 drew to a close, Nemechek scored a pair of runner-up finishes in Hampton, Georgia and Homestead, Florida, then won a rain-shortened race at Richmond, Virginia on May 3, 2003.
The weekend of his Richmond victory, Jerry Nadeau was critically injured in a practice crash while driving Nelson Bowers’ #01 U.S. Army Pontiac. As the 2003 season progressed, several drivers took turns in the #01, including 2005 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Mike Skinner. At the same time, Nemechek’s team owner Rick Hendrick was eyeing Brian Vickers, who was on his way to a Busch Series title in Hendrick’s #5. With four races to go in the 2003 season, Nemechek was released from Hendrick Motorsports to make way for Vickers, and Nemechek took over the #01 ride from Skinner.
Once again, Nemechek took advantage of the opportunity finishing 19th in the 2004 point standings and scoring an upset victory in the Banquet 400 at Kansas City, Kansas on October 10, 2004. It was a dominating weekend for Nemechek, whose #01 U.S. Army Chevrolet won the Cup race from the pole the day after he won the Busch Series race in his NEMCO #87 Cellular One Chevrolet at the same track. That weekend marked the fourth Cup win and sixteenth XFINITY win of Nemechek’s career, which to date are his last wins in both divisions.
Nemechek ran two more seasons in the U.S. Army #01, scoring an additional two Top Fives and eleven Top Tens, including a 16th-place finish in the 2005 point standings. In 2007, the Nelson Bowers team was bought by Bobby Ginn, moving Nemechek to a start-up #13 team while Mark Martin, Regan Smith, and Aric Almirola shared the #01. Ginn’s fortune turned sour, however, and after a 29th-place finish at Joliet, Illinois in Ginn’s #13 on July 15, 2007, Nemechek was out of a ride.
After a fan-supported start in the E&M Motorsports #08 at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 21, 2007, a run which resulted in his eighth last-place finish in Cup, Nemechek replaced Kenny Wallace as driver of the #78 Furniture Row Chevrolet fielded by Barney Visser’s Colorado-based start-up team, Furniture Row Racing. Though Nemechek finished last in his first two starts for Visser at Fontana, California and Richmond, Virginia (the former due to engine failure after nine laps, the latter due to a crash after 130 laps), then failed to qualify for three of the last six races, he was signed as the full-time driver of the #78 for 2008.
It was in 2008 that Nemechek scored his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship. His first last-place finish of the year came in the August 31 running of the Pepsi 500 in Fontana, California, where his #78 Furniture Row / DenverMattress.com Chevrolet was involved in a single-car crash after 67 laps. The next came two races later in Loudon, New Hampshire, where a crash after 218 laps was the cause during the Sylvania 300 on September 14. The third finish came five races after that in Martinsville, Virginia, where another crash sidelined him after 115 laps.
At the end of 2008, Nemechek finished 37th in points for the second consecutive season, his first full season without a single top-ten finish.
In 2009, as in 1995, Nemechek moved on to bring NEMCO Motorsports back into the Cup Series. However, with sponsorship significantly harder to attract, the strategy would be much different this time. NEMCO returned to full-time Nationwide Series competition in 2009 and, for the first time, Nemechek would attempt to run a full-time Cup Series campaign on top of it. This would require Nemechek to conserve his Cup Series resources through “start-and-park” runs in the richer Cup races to fund his full-race running Nationwide Series program.
Thus, in 2009, Nemechek finished last four more times, averaging a finish of 39.5. However, even with limited resources, his flat blue and gold #87 Toyotas were extremely consistent in qualifying. Nemechek made thirty of thirty-six races that season on qualifying speed without the help of Owner Points, and he narrowly missed racing his way into the field for the Daytona 500. Thus, NEMCO Motorsports lived on, ready to run the full season once more in 2010.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
In the Dodge Avenger 500 on May 10, 2008, polesitter Greg Biffle set the all-time record for most laps led by a last-place finisher of a Cup Series race when he led 95 laps only to lose the engine on his #16 3M Ford after 234 laps. Thanks to the increased sturdiness of NASCAR’s “Car of Tomorrow,” which ran the full season for the first time, drivers could earn their “Darlington Stripes” without causing significant damage to their vehicles, and no one was out of the race when Biffle’s engine let go. This took down a record that had stood since May 26, 1968, when Cale Yarborough’s #21 60 Minute Cleaners 1968 Mercury crashed while leading the World 600 in Concord, North Carolina.
Two-time NASCAR Busch Series Champion Martin Truex, Jr. scored his first last-place finish in Cup in the Camping World RV 400 at Kansas City, Kansas on September 28 when his #1 Bass Pro Shops / Tracker Boats Chevrolet started 5th and led 27 laps before the transmission broke after 229 laps. Truex, Jr. currently drives the #56 NAPA Toyota for Michael Waltrip Racing, a team he joined in 2010.
Jamie McMurray, the 2003 NASCAR Cup Series Rookie of the Year, scored his first last-place finish on March 16, when his #26 Crown Royal Ford finished 133 laps down in the Food City 500 at Bristol, Tennessee following a mid-race crash. As of 2013, this is McMurray’s only last-place finish in Cup. Two years after that Bristol race, McMurray would climb aboard the #1 vacated by Truex, Jr. and win in his first start with the team - the Daytona 500 on February 14, 2010.
Launceston, Tasmania’s Marcos Ambrose, a two-time Australian V8 SuperCar Champion, scored his first last-place finish at Brooklyn, Michigan on August 17 when his #21 Little Debbie Ford, prepared by the Wood Brothers, blew the engine after seventeen laps of the 3M Performance 400. Ambrose currently has two Cup Series wins at Watkins Glen, New York, both of them in his current ride - the #9 Stanley / DeWalt Ford prepared by Richard Petty Motorsports.
One year after his four-win season in the ARCA Racing Series, Michael McDowell became the new driver of the #00 Aaron’s Dream Machine at Michael Waltrip Racing after David Reutimann took over the #44 UPS Toyota for a retiring Dale Jarrett. Less than a week after his first Cup start at Martinsville, Virginia, McDowell survived a horrifying crash in qualifying at Fort Worth, Texas where his car hit the Turn One wall head-on. His first last-place finish came in one of his last starts for MWR, the LifeLock 400 at Joliet, Illinois, where his #00 Champion Mortgage Toyota finished under power, but eight laps down. The next season, Reutimann jumped back in the #00, and McDowell found himself on “start-and-park” duty for several start-up teams, including Tommy Baldwin Racing, Whitney Motorsports, and most significantly, three teams owned by 1989 LASTCAR Cup Series Champion Phil Parsons.
Four open-wheel drivers tried to break into the Cup Series in 2008, and all scored one last-place finish apiece that season:
On February 25, three-time IndyCar Series Champion and 2006 Indianapolis 500 winner Sam Hornish, Jr. fell out twenty laps into the Auto Club 500 in Fontana, California when his Roger Penske-owned #77 Mobil 1 Dodge caught fire in a spectacular crash twenty laps into the race.
Joliette, Quebec, Canada driver Patrick Carpentier, a five-time winner in the Champ Car World Series, scored his first on May 3 in Richmond, Virginia, when he started 4th in his #10 LifeLock Dodge, then triggered an eleven-car pileup 228 laps into the Crown Royal Dan Lowry 400.
Edinburgh, Scotland’s Dario Franchitti, a four-time IndyCar Series Champion and three-time Indianapolis 500 winner, scored his at Brooklyn, Michigan on June 15 when the engine let go on his #40 Juicy Fruit Slim Pack Dodge thirty laps into the 3M Performance 400.
Como, Italy’s “Mad” Max Papis, a three-time winner in the Champ Car World Series, scored his in Watkins Glen, New York on August 10 when his #70 Haas Automation Chevrolet was one of nine cars taken out in a frightening wreck on the frontstretch with just nine laps to go in the Centurion Boats at the Glen. Papis became the first driver to finish last in a Cup race driving car #70 since the late J.D. McDuffie’s fatal crash at Watkins Glen seventeen years earlier.
As of 2013, none of these drivers races full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Meanwhile, in the Truck Series, Derrike Cope scored the first (and so far only) last-place finish in his Truck Series career on May 16 in the North Carolina Education Lottery 200 at Concord, North Carolina on when his #74 Derrike Cope, Inc. Dodge fell out with a vibration after four laps. Combined with his six Busch Series last-place finishes earned through 2007 and twenty-six last-place finishes earned in the Cup Series through 2006, Cope had amassed 33 last-place finishes among the top three NASCAR divisions, beating the all-time record set by J.D. McDuffie’s 32 Cup Series last-place finishes that had stood since 1991.
Although Cope would extend his total to 36 last-place finishes across all three divisions, that mark would be eclipsed in 2012.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) A.J. Allmendinger [6 B5s], Joe Nemechek [9 B5s] (3)
2nd) Greg Biffle, Kyle Busch, Ryan Newman, Martin Truex, Jr., Michael Waltrip (2)
3rd) Marcos Ambrose, Dave Blaney, Kurt Busch, Patrick Carpentier, Dario Franchitti, Jeff Gordon, Robby Gordon, Denny Hamlin, Sam Hornish, Jr., Sterling Marlin, Michael McDowell, Jamie McMurray, Juan Pablo Montoya, Max Papis, Scott Riggs, Elliott Sadler, Brian Simo, Reed Sorenson, Tony Stewart, Kenny Wallace (1)
