When NASCAR Underdogs Ruled For A Day! 

Rockingham is such a great track because it takes a great performance from the driver to win there. It needs to come back 5 years ago.

And here's a Fun Fact about that racecar Nemechek was driving. A couple years prior which mainly led to Andy Petree Racing shutting down, was the loss of the Skoal Bandit tobacco sponsor, which left NASCAR after 1999. Knowing that in mind, the #33 car hadn't been as good since 1994, and it was like Joe Nemechek was racing like Harry Gant did in the early 90's with that same exact car and team, but different sponsorship. It's a real shame that team shut down though. If Nemechek were to still be with that team, I could've seen 2002 being a breakout season for him.

Also, in qualifying that weekend, Dick Trickle had a top 10 starting spot driving Dave Marcis's car, a team that only runs well at the restrictor plate tracks.

Front Row Joe and Herman! both great drivers and Busch series mainstays battling it out for a cup series win is truly mindblowing.

I'm a huge fan of shining a spotlight on, not only underdog drivers, but also random races that may not have been particularly notable, but still featured unique storylines. Would love to see more content like this!

NASCAR made a huge mistake taking Rockingham off of the schedule. Plus, I also miss this type of Era for NASCAR so much.

I always loved that oakwood's home scheme Joe ran in 2001

Joe Nemechek is so underrated but hard not to like him, he had a pretty good cup career, despite winning only 4 races

I'm surprised Ricky Craven wasn't in the top five. He was pretty good on the worn out tracks, having a setup for Atlanta, Darlington, and Rockingham.

As an F1 fan in addition to NASCAR, this race reminds me a lot of the 1996 Monaco GP in terms of weirdness where both Williams (the dominant team that season) did not finish & only one Ferrari finished. Meanwhile Mika Salo driving a Tyrrell would finish 5th marking the last time Tyrrell would finish in the points. However what makes this weird is that the drivers that finished 4th-6th did not complete all of the laps to get their points. Only 3 cars completed the entire race which were also the same 3 who finished on the podium in Olivier Panis (Ligier), David Coulthard (McLaren) & Johnny Herbert (Sauber). For both Panis & Ligier it would be their only F1 win & to this day this race holds the record for the fewest cars running at the end of it in F1 history.

Forgot to mention that Johnny Benson Jr won his only Cup race at Rockingham the following year. Benson, the 1995 Busch Series Champion, would later go on to win the 2008 Truck series championship.

Front Row Joe Nemechek was screwed multiple times by funding issues. The 33 Oakwood car, the 26 Travis Carter car with KMart, the 13 Ginn car and the years he was forced into start and parking with his own 87 car. And... Joe isn't officially retired yet.

We needs a Rockingham returning

In some ways, this race reminds me of an F1 race that featured underdogs running ahead of the "front runners". In Belgium 2009, Jenson Button had a fairly healthy 18 point lead (bearing in mind there were 10 points available for a win in F1 at the time) over his Brawn GP team mate Rubens Barrichello (who had won the previous race in Valencia) and 20.5 over Mark Webber. The first indication of something unusual happening was in the second part of qualifying where two of the champions in the field, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso were only 12th and 13th respectively, but the big shock was who was 14th on the grid, championship leader Jenson Button. In the end, the top 3 in qualifying were as follows: on pole position (the first for Force India and his first since Malaysia 2006) was Giancarlo Fisichella, second was the Toyota of Jarno Trulli and third was the BMW of Nick Heidfeld. It wasn't a fluke either, owing to the top 10 running with race fuel in Q3 at the time, Fisichella had a competitive fuel load, the team had fuelled him for a 2 stop fuel strategy, in other words it wasn't a glory run to take pole. A first lap accident in the race involved 2 of the front runners, Hamilton and Button and after the Safety Car period, Fisichella still led the field at the restart on lap 5. However, right behind him was the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery System) boosted Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen and on the longest straight, he used KERS to boost past the Force India to take the lead. Everyone assumed that was that, but it became clear that Raikkonen, contrary to expectations couldn't pull clear of the Force India, driving as fast as possible just to stay ahead. Despite being on the same fuel strategy, Ferrari could do little more to help Raikkonen extend the gap. By the end of the race, Raikkonen held on to claim Ferrari's only win of 2009, but for Force India it was a bitter sweet result. Yes, it was their first points finish and a podium on top of that, but with a race win less than a second ahead of them and Fisichella leaving after that race (ironically) to replace the underperforming Luca Badoer (who himself was subbing for the injured Felipe Massa), meant that this was as good as it got for that team

As a 9 year old Gordon fan at this race I remember being bored out of my mind! Glad it had some significance for this video 😅

0:51 a wreck involving an Earnhardt, Elliott, and Petty. Wonder how many other times that has happened?

shout out to the 2007 coca cola 600 as well

Had Herman won, it would have been a very popular win.

Kind of odd to hear of Kurt Busch being called an underdog when looking back from today. Over thirty wins including the 2017 Daytona 500, he did have some struggle years, but you still couldn't always count him out.

Fun video! I'd love to see you talk about the 2006 fall Charlotte race where Dave Blaney won. It was wild.

Why did we have better TV HUD graphics 2 decades ago?

Lot of great competitive racing that year. You didn't know who would be in the top 5. I really enjoyed watching through them all again on youtube

When I saw Joe Nemechek at Rockingham as the thumbnail, I knew immediately which race this was... I just smiled. 😊

The main reason Kenny was an underdog for that race, he was basically a substitute driver for Steve Park (who had been injured in a crash earlier in the year), and Park had won that year's other Rockingham race.

3:42 "The Matrix Coming in December" fuck i feel old

Black Flags Matter, I Love Your Videos! I have Watched Your Videos for 4 Years and I have Enjoyed Every One and They’re Really Good all together. Keep up The Good Work!

Unfortunately, we couldn't see a Victory Lane celebration and interview of Nemechek's win here because the race went on a little too long, awkwardly enough...even though it aired on TNT, therefore, it shouldn't be much of an issue.

2007 Coca Cola 600 was another underdog day

That 2007 Coke 600 T5 might be in the conversation as well 25- Casey mears winner 18 JJ Yeley 2nd 45 Kyle petty 3rd 41 reed sorenson 4th 83 Vickers 5th (dominant car)

Me and my dad went up to Kenny's shop a few months ago and talked to him for about an hour or so. I definitely made sure to ask him about this race. He actually has the piston from qualifying engraved. Definitely his finest hour in Cup.

Hmm, just looking up something and came across a interesting Idea for a potential series: NASCAR Team Owners who races themselves. Looking around Wikipedia I found out that Trackhouse owner Justin Marks got some raceing experience rangeing from ARCA to Cup along with IMSA and a SRX start. ARCA from 2005-2010, mainly part time with 2007 & 2010 being his only full time seasons with 1 Win in 2010, finishing 6th in points with a 5th in points for his 2007 run. IMSA (GTD class (GT3 cars)) 2016-2019 with 2018 being his only full time season there finishing 9th in points with a best finish of 2nd before getting a Win in his 3rd of 4 starts in 2019. As for NASCAR, in Trucks he make 39 starts over 7 years between 2007 & 2022 with 4 top 10s & and 2 poles, Xfinity was 36 Races over 10 years between 2008 & 2023 (Most recent race was Chicago in the Kaulig #10 (DNFed to end up 38th)) with 1 Win (2016 Mid-Ohio) and 7 Top 10s (1 Win, and 2 Top 5s among those), and he also got some Cup starts with 6 races over 4 years from 2013-2018 with a best finish of 12th for Rick Ware Racing in the 2018 Daytona 500.

what a race, allowed to develop without bs cautions, stages or lucky dogs

That was the last ever win for Andy Petree Racing. Kurt eventually got his first cup win months later at Bristol.

Nowadays a race like this can't happen due to stage cautions. I think the green white checkered should be dropped but not the yellow.

Never heard of this before. Thanks for the video BFM.

PLEASE BRING ROCKINGHAM BACK!

BFM another great video 📷 my friend. For the record Rockingham should be back on the cup series schedule sooner than later.😊

If Nemecheck or Benson had been put in an A tier ride, i seriously think we'd be talking about perennial championship contenders

This would make a great series

Crazy that Andy Petree racing couldn't stay open with the success they had. You figure someone would sponsor them

Should make a series out of this lol🤙🏁

Marty Robbins

Amazing race and story

I believe this was the race where Ward Burton crashed out and said something along the lines of "..we ran like shit anyway". I remember watching this race live, I was 16 at the time. It was sort of a snooze fest at the end. Happy Nemechek got a win that season. Especially after pushing Bobby Hamilton, his teammate to a win at the Spring '01 Talladega race.

Miss those tracks with old abrasive asphalt. Made it a drivers race where being smooth, managing tires and finding grip were the key.

I just watched that race not long ago. Once again, great Rockingham racing. Hopefully get to see it again one day

Imagine the next gen car running on this track.

I see new video, I click.

I believe this was the race where Kyle Petty said "something something I don't wanna bad mouth Dale Jr cause if you ask the fans he hung the moon and I wanna make sure I see the moon tonight"

6:53 Imagine a car owner today being over the wall on pitroad during a race.

I was never a fan of Kurt Busch but his '01 paint scheme was such an underrated beauty. I wish he'd done what Jeff Gordon and Dale Jr. did at the end of their careers and replicated it on a next gen car. It likely would've been my first Kurt Busch 1:24 lol

Back when NASCAR was still making “BANK”…. Literally……

I miss that track. I hope it was worth your second Texas race Ferko…

Solid video man

Wild to see that wasn’t a caution and a red flag for Kurt Busch’s overheating issue on pit road. At least there wasn’t a playoff format too or this race would have ended everything for countless top guys - including the champ Gordon.

I need more of this !! Awesome content

Kenny Wallace needs to make a video about this race. How it was driving for DEI.

Been playing dirt to Daytona and I love this track !

I remember Kenny earning the nickname "the super sub" though i feel like he complained about it for some reason?

Awesome vid I had just watched the 2000 race from the rock

Rockingham was a driver's track. Moreso than Darlington, in my opinion. Alot of underdog moments at that track. Also, it wasn't mentioned here, but Kenny was catching up to Joe at the very end. Just didn't have enough laps left to get there.

I miss nascar without stages and stage cautions! I miss organic racing!

If you want to talk about Underdog's, talk about the day's of the 80's and 90's. Back when the driver had to manhandle the car and all teams didn't have the same equipment

6:17 While I felt bad for Kurt Busch at the time, he got a championship and 34 wins in his career. Wasn't much of an underdog anymore starting next year. And glad Joe got the win since he only has 4 wins.

The 2001 popsecret popcorn popping in a bag in a nicrowave for 2 min and 30 msybe add some melted butter 400.

I remember this race. My driver was having a very bad race & season. For this race. I was rooting for Kenny Wallace. Mike Wallace was also played in the replacement role in #12 car.

Always good when it happens on a real driver's track and not some superspeedway where there was a big wreck

One of the few races where 3 drivers who became apart of the "NASCAR Dozen" swept the podium. 😀😀😀

As long as Rockingham gets the intermediate package, or NASCAR gets their heads out of Hendrick's ass, I'm totally in for a return to the Rock.

What about elliot sadler going from 43rd to 1st at bristol with the wood brothers?

All 4 of joe nemechek cup wins are with 4 different cup teams

I so wish NASCAR would either bring Rockingham back (unlikely) or build a replica/reconfigure an existing track (cough Texas cough) into a Rockingham clone. That track produced good racing.

I need my check.

Future uploads: Random Drivers: Rico Abreu and Revisiting J.J. Yeley.

I was there! 😂

I think Gen 7 cars would like Rockingham

i never knew Joe won this race 😮

kurt busch an underdog? in the 97? kurt won a championship in that car

Pin?

Just the clips would be so much better. Too much commentary.

i never cared for one lap down joe

That name tho lol 😂

This ALWAYS happens. Even though I've seen that race..... I was still excited watching that!