John Hunter Nemechek first put his name in the hat for Rookie of the Year Honors in the NASCAR Cup Series this season with an 11th place result in the season opening Daytona 500 back in February. That run was partially expected though. It’s the uncertainty of beast with superspeedway racing and an even playing field that leads to that.

But, the odds of remaining as the top first year driver in NASCARs premiere series much begin beyond Daytona was slim. It’s not his fault though. The rookie class this year is a strong one.

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The “Big 3” will rival almost any rookie class that has ever come through here. Combined, Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick and Cole Custer won 31 of the last 66 Xfinity Series races before they made their leaps into the Cup Series for 2020. Reddick, also won two championships in-a-row. So, forgive Nemechek for being the forgotten one of the group.

Nemechek, was driving for a team, Front Row Racing, on a tight budget. The rest were handed some of the top equipment in the business at the Cup level with Bell at Leavine Family Racing (essentially a 5th JGR car), Custer with Stewart-Haas Racing and Reddick driving for Richard Childress Racing.

Despite that Nemechek was battling up front with Reddick at the end of Sunday’s Cup race at Darlington. Reddick finished seventh, Nemechek ninth.

What made that impressive was, this was Nemecheks first career Cup start at the track dubbed “Too Tough To Tame” and he accomplished a top 10 after having no practice, no qualifying and no racing in general in 70 days.

The top 10 was FRMs first non superspeedway top 10 in four years and only their third ever.

“It was like the Big Three and me, and I’m like, what about me over here?” Nemechek said on a zoom call on Monday. “I’m definitely trying to make a name for myself as far as part of the rookie class, and I feel like we’ve been able to do some of that and we just have to continue to try to do that, but the Big Three definitely aren’t going away.

“They’re hard to compete with and they’re all really good. To be able to continue to compete with them and to race them week in, week out with the circumstances that we have at Front Row, it definitely makes myself feel good and makes our team feel good.”

Nemechek said that he feels like the speed has been there all year and they just keep getting better and better.

“Yesterday, we came in with no expectations,” Nemechek continued. “We just kind of had the mindset to run every lap and learn the most that we possibly could. While doing that we made the right adjustments all day.

“We stayed on top of the racetrack and kind of ran our own race and it led to us running top-15 most of the day, which is a really great accomplishment for myself and Front Row Motorsports.”

Now, can he keep the momentum going on Wednesday?