If the floor of his race shop isn't swept to his satisfaction, Joe Nemechek sweeps it. If parts need to be fetched from a vendor for either his Sprint Cup or Nationwide series cars, Joe Nemechek will likely be the one doing the fetching, unless he's busy updating his website with bylined news releases.

Or unless he's under a deadline machining parts for the Super Late Model car his son, John Hunter, will drive on a given weekend. And then there are sponsor calls. Lots of them.

Times are better, financially, for the 49-year-old driver/owner/everything else, but that doesn't mean they're easier, he said.

Such is the life of the modern NASCAR driver/owner/hustler. Few in NASCAR do both as vigorously and consistently as Nemechek in the shadows of the megateams that rule the sport.

Joe Nemechek remains a popular underdog to root for among NASCAR fans. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images for Texas Motor Speedway

"Every day is a challenge and I look at it as an opportunity," Nemechek said. "We have a small group of guys [at NEMCO Motorsports]. We're in a partnership this year with Jay Robinson and we've been able to run all the Cup races so far. We're building."

It's a slow process, often measured not so much by on-track performance but by the ability to get there.

"We basically have three cars that are finished. That's all we have," he said of his Cup fleet. "Compared to the big teams, we're so far behind. You can't even compare it. But we're working really hard to get our stuff better every week, actually working on building a couple new Cup cars.

"The Nationwide cars are mostly the stuff they just updated from last year, and we've been running well with that."

Nemechek won the 1992 Nationwide championship as a driver/owner and has 16 career wins over 24 seasons and 397 starts in the second-tier series. He has four wins in 625 Cup starts over 21 years, most recently at Kansas Speedway -- site of this week's event -- in 2004. He is nothing if not a survivor, and there is the feeling that he isn't going anywhere.

His endurance and survival instincts have helped place him fourth all time in starts in NASCAR's top three series, with 1,029. He is in elite company, trailing just seven-time series champion and all-time wins leader Richard Petty (1,182), Mark Martin (1,120) and Michael Waltrip (1,059).

Nemechek has maintained some semblance of his own organization even while racing for others, including Hendrick Motorsports and the now-defunct MB2 Motorsports and Ginn Racing (MB2 changed its name to Ginn Racing, and a subsequent merger folded Ginn into Dale Earnhardt Inc.). Nemechek's mother, Martha, was a proud and ever-present extension of her son's sponsor relationship with the U.S. Army at MB2 and Ginn, wearing fatigues and other camouflage apparel to races. His younger brother, John, was killed in a 1997 Truck series crash at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

"Joe is a racer and that's what he and his family are good at it," said ESPN analyst and former Cup champion Dale Jarrett. "They have experienced highs, and obviously a terrible low in the sport. It's amazing to see them run these two operations and make it all work. They show up every week and put fast race cars out there, and they know when they can race, and they try to make the points and try to make a good showing on the days they can.