moved his No. 87 team up to the Cup series with sponsorship from Burger King, and posted a fourth-place finish at the MBNA 500 and finished 28th in points. After he dropped to 34th in points, he abandoned his Cup series team and signed to drive the No. 42 Bellsouth-sponsored car for SABCO Racing. After losing his brother John in an accident at Homestead-Miami Speedway early in the year, Nemechek won the first two pole positions of his career, at California Speedway and Pocono Raceway, respectively. He posted four Top 10's and finished a career-best 26th in points the following year. Midway through 1999, he announced he would not return to the No. 42 team the following season when he picked up his first career victory at Loudon. He won two more poles at Martinsville and Talladega Superspeedway and finished 30th in points that year. Andy Petree Racing and Hendrick Motorsports For 2000, Nemechek signed to drive the No. 33 Oakwood Homes-sponsored Chevrolet for Andy Petree Racing, winning the pole at Talladega and finishing a career-best 15th in points. He missed five races the following year after suffering an elbow injury at a test at Dover in 2001, then went on to win the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400 at North Carolina Speedway that November. After Petree's team began to run into financial problems, Nemechek's team was left without a sponsor and he left for Haas-Carter Motorsports to take over the No. 26 Kmart-sponsored Ford Taurus that Jimmy Spencer had left for Chip Ganassi Racing. However, Nemechek went from one financial problem to another, as Kmart filed for bankruptcy early in the 2002 season and stopped sponsoring the Haas-Carter team. This forced Haas-Carter to scale back its operations to one team, and Nemechek was released in favor of keeping Todd Bodine, who was driving the team's other car, in the fold. Nemechek found an opportunity almost immediately, as Johnny Benson Jr., who was the driver of the No. 10 Valvoline-sponsored Pontiac for MBV Motorsports, was injured in a crash the previous race and required a substitute. After driving one race in Benson's car at Richmond, Nemechek was hired by Hendrick Motorsports to replace Jerry Nadeau in the No. 25 UAW/Delphi-sponsored Chevrolet. Nemechek drove the remainder of the season for Hendrick and performed well enough to earn that ride full time the next season, including 2nd place runs at Atlanta and