Joe Nemechek hopes making Daytona 500 sparks full season of racing

By Bob Pockrass

Monday, February 08, 2010

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DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Joe Nemechek plans to run the entire Nationwide and Sprint Cup schedules, and so far, his plan got off to a good start.

Nemechek made the Daytona 500 field, which can go a long way for a Nemco Motorsports operation looking for sponsorship.

“We’re basically racing off the purse, the money that we win,” Nemechek said. “That’s what pays the bills. If you don’t get in the show, you still have huge expenses you have to pay for. We’ve got a lot of good things going on with potential sponsors and potential marketing folks that can help us.”

After qualifying for the Daytona 500, Nemechek feels a good run will be a big boost – in both purse and potential sponsorship for the season.

“We’re going to try racing good in the 150s,” said Nemechek, who qualified for 31 of 36 races last year but parked his car before the halfway point in 27 events. “We’re going to do our best. … The main goal is to come out of the Daytona 500 with a top-15 run. If we can do that, that’s going to be a big plus for us.

“We’ve got a lot of folks out there that are working on all our marketing programs and trying to find us some partners to find us some funds to let us race more and more. This is a big step towards that.”

With 520 career Cup starts and four victories as well as a 1992 title in what was then the Busch Series, the 46-year-old Nemechek isn’t ready to give up on racing. He has 16 career Nationwide Series victories in 296 starts. He started 22 races in that series last year and ran the distance in 10 of them.

“There’s a lot of good race-car drivers out there right now that don’t have a lot going on,” Nemechek said. “So I decided to start my own [Cup] team. At least I’m in control of what I’m doing, but the bad thing is I’ve got to pay all the bills. There’s pros and cons to it all, but in the end, I think it’s going to be a good thing.”

Nemechek has Philippe Lopez as his crew chief on the Cup side and Derrick Finley as his main engineer.

“We’re just doing everything on a very, very limited budget,” Nemechek said. “At times, I’ve got to ask myself why am I still doing this. But I want to race, and I feel good about what’s going to come out of all this and hopefully we’re going to land with a great marketing partner and be able to run competitively.”