What's NASCAR's 'Front Row Joe' up to? Having a blast racing vintage cars at Road America.

ELKHART LAKE – With three wins already this season in the Xfinity Series, including the last weekend at Atlanta, John Hunter Nemechek is far more likely than his father to be on the mind of a NASCAR fan of the current generation.

But you can still find “Front Row Joe” at the racetrack. In fact, he is as busy as ever, working on vintage race cars and driving a familiar No. 87 car of his own, a 2007 NASCAR Toyota Camry, as well as anything a customer or friend will offer.

The 59-year-old Lakeland, Florida, native won the 1992 championship and twice was voted most popular driver in what was then the Busch Series. He has made more than 1,200 NASCAR starts from 1989-2020 across the three national series with four Cup Series victories and 16 in the Xfinity Series, as well as a total of 28 poles.

This weekend he’s at Road America, racing in the WeatherTech International Challenge, which has drawn more than 500 cars of all types and ages to the same rolling 4.048-mile course where John Hunter and the Xfinity Series will race in two weeks.

Between on-track sessions Friday, the elder Nemechek talked about his relatively new racing passion and a big dream he has for the future with his son.

Q: Having fun doing this stuff?

Nemechek: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It’s a blast.

Q: How much are you doing?

Nemechek: I race every chance I get and I drive whatever I can drive. The last couple of years have been cool, from racing the old ’69 Camaros and Mustangs and the big ol’ heavy muscle cars to prototypes. I drive everything and I’m having a blast.

Q: How does a guy who spends his life in racing decide that his life after racing is more racing?

Nemechek: That’s a good question. But right now our business, NEMCO Motorsports and Nemechek Motorsports Engineering, we’re restoring all these old stock cars and making them go fast and drive right and do all the things you want them to do for customers. We’ve probably done 15 or 20 of them now and the customers are happy, the stuff drives good and they all go fast.

Q: You buy old stuff, fix it and sell it to them?

Nemechek: They buy it or have me go buy it, or I’ve got, like, 50 of ’em in the warehouse I’m waiting to break out. Trying to get rid of all this stuff.

Q: Of the cars you’ve had a chance to drive the last couple of years, what have you enjoyed most?

Nemechek: Man, they’re all fun. … They’re just so much fun. The brakes aren’t very good on them. Everything. You’ve got to drive them.

Right now all I’m driving is (stock cars). The prototype guys haven’t come asked me to drive.

Q: But you have, in competition?

Nemechek: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Got to drive at night at Sebring (Florida). The first night stint in a prototype. Hauled ass.

Q: If the 59-year-old Joe Nemechek told the 29-year-old version of you that someday you’d be driving a night stint in a prototype at Sebring, what would he have said?

Nemechek: Man, at the time … I knew what they were, but it was like, I’ll never have the opportunity to do that. Yeah, heck. One of these times, hopefully my son, when he gets some of his stuff figured out, then hopefully we can do some 24-hour races or do some stuff like that. I’d have fun doing that.

I love to race, man. I’ll drive anything. It don’t matter.

Q: But a 24-hour race …?

Nemechek: Oh, yeah, you need codrivers. But yeah, I’m all in.

Q: Daytona?

Nemechek: Anywhere. Doesn’t matter.

Q: Le Mans?

Nemechek: Oh, yeah. Anywhere. It’s all good.

Q: What is your identity now? Are you Joe Nemechek the vintage racer, the former NASCAR guy or John Hunter’s dad?

Nemechek: Yeah … I’m all the above. But my biggest thing right now is the former NASCAR driver that’s an engineer that knows how to take a stock car, put them together correctly, make them go fast, drive right and not break.

That’s the key in vintage racing. These folks spend a lot of money to come to the track, and they need to run all weekend. When I first came over here for my first time, man, everybody was breaking. It was like, holy moly, couldn’t believe it. I kind of put my touches on it, helping a few people and, man, picked them up a bunch and they never broke down. So that’s kind of what my trademark is. …

Q: That does fit with your background. You were one of those guys very much hands-on.

Nemechek: Oh, I’ve been hands-on my whole career. I’ve been building my own cars my whole life and doing all this stuff. I know what it takes to make them go. We’re up to date on all the technology from helping my son and building parts and pieces for all the other NASCAR teams. It’s all good. We’re in good shape.

Q: When did you start racing these things?

Nemechek: I really didn’t start racing them till the beginning of last year. And then I went undefeated for – I don’t know – 28 events or something we ran last year. And I was running all kinds of different cars last year. It was fun. I tell ya, a normal weekend everybody comes, says, “Go drive my car and figure out what’s wrong with it.” So I do a lot of that, diagnosing problems.

Q: How about coaching?

Nemechek: I do that too. Do it all.

Just gotta manage my time. Because these events … I work on customer cars the whole time I’m at home and so when I get to the racetrack I gotta work on my own personal stuff. It’s difficult.

Q: In the era when you came through NASCAR, there were a lot of guys who looked at the two road course races a year as a necessary evil. They’d go out there but not like it. Where did you fit?

Nemechek: Oh, I love road racing. We come close to winning Watkins Glen (New York) and we come close to winning Sears Point (now Sonoma Raceway). The Busch cars and the trucks at Watkins Glen back in the day, we sat on the pole all the time, we led races. ... We’ve run good at road races, so this kind of fit in.

But all these tracks are new. That’s all I ever did was Watkins Glen and Sears Point. And now we do everything. I went to Watkins Glen last year for an event and we’ll be back this year with the NASCAR race doing a support deal. We go everywhere, from VIR (Virginia International Raceway) to Sebring to Road Atlanta. I had too much work this year so I didn’t get to make it … to Lime Rock. They have an event in New Jersey we’re going to see if we can make. There’s events all the time. It’s just trying to manage time.

Then I gotta keep the shop running because there’s only three of us there now. And we do all the work. So now we’re gone for a complete week, so there’s nothing getting accomplished right now.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: NASCAR's Joe Nemechek racing vintage cars at Road America