After a rough start to the season, Nick Joanides and the JSI Motorsports team charged all the way up to fourth in the final point standings in his first full season in the Featherlite Southwest Series Standings.
The season got off to a rough start for the team with only two top 15 finishes through the first eight races which had Nick in 15th in the point standings. The team rebounded from the early season bad luck with only one finish out of the top 15 in the final eight races with that one being a 17th due to an electrical fire with four laps to go while running 5th at Madera.
Nick owes his success to the hard work of his team, Jackson Race Cars and his engine builder Ed Hansen. Nick funded the entire season out of his own pocket, which prevented the team from doing any testing the entire season, yet Jackson Race Cars gave Nick cars capable of running in or near the top 5 in viturally every race and did so on an extremely limited budget. Jackson Race Cars definitely made alot out of very little. Ed Hansen's experience with his championship motors for Steve Portenga proved extremely valuable to Nick as the motors had awesome power and ran flawless all season long. Each and every team member worked their tails off and stayed dedicated to Nick and the team even though they had offers of more money elsewhere. Although Nick could not reward them financially, he is extremely pleased that their work was rewarded with such a good finish in the standings in one of the most competitive series in NASCAR. The team would also like to thank all of the Nascar officials for doing such a great job at keeping the series on a level playing field. Nick knows that without their hard work, there is no way the team could have competed as they did on such a limited budget.
Nicks future plans are up in the air right now as he realizes he can not afford to compete at a top level, which is why he is being forced to sell the team. Nick does hope to find an opportunity to keep racing in 2002 and will continue to explore other possiblities to do so.
