Long after Camping World Truck Series qualifying had ended, with the sun setting behind the mountains around Martinsville Speedway, Jennifer Jo Cobb remains on pit road happily braving the cold.
Those passing by would never have guessed Cobb failed to make the field for Saturday’s race. She’s still smiling, laughing and enjoying casual conversations with those gathered near her and the 10 truck, which sits behind her idle in its pit stall.
Martinsville marked the second straight week, fifth this year, that Cobb missed the show. She knew it was coming, expected it actually, but it didn’t stop her from trying. Just as she tries every week, every year with the odds continually stacked against her but an attitude to indicate otherwise.
“That is my strength and I’m grateful for it. We’re not a winning team. I don’t have a lot of money. We’re probably never going to have the best engine. We might never have the best looking truck, our trucks have been looking horrible lately,” Cobb admits, laughing about the true assessment.
Upon closer inspection her Dodge doesn’t resemble a NASCAR vehicle. There’s no sleek paint scheme or look to it. The wear and tear is evident; dirt and past battle scares are proudly on display. Cobb does the best with what she has.
“We are a team that can, hopefully, inspire,” she revealed. “Whether it’s a big team next to us, that watches us and they’re having a rough year (that see us able to smile). Or, once I got an email that brought me to tears about a kid with cancer that said, I was told you’re an example of not giving up and as long as you won’t, I won’t.
“It’s like, gosh, how do you just throw it in after going through everything? That’s why I always say it will be clear as a bell from God the day that I quit. It won’t be because it’s tough.”
Tough has been an understatement. The Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing team have seen and gone through it all. Challenging, she admits, but they’re overcomers who have gotten through struggling on the racetrack to fighting for their livelihood off it.
Cobb and fellow driver Mike Harmon among other parties had been in the middle of a legal battle over racing equipment and other belongings. Last week she asked the judge to drop the charges, ready to move on and get back to focusing on the track, determined to keep going until she just can’t anymore.
“When you say a sign – this is hilarious because on the way to Talladega, the day were leaving for Talladega, Steve (Kuykendall) fell off a lift gate, dislocated his shoulder. So now I have a crew chief with one arm and in a lot of pain and lucky to be alive,” Cobb said. “Then on the way to Talladega our tractor broke down and I literally drove my truck up interstate 85 to load it on an empty car hauler of a guy that just stopped on the side of the road to get us to the track. In the rain.”
If only that were the end of it but Cobb continued to tell the story of how once she finally made it to Talladega security at first wasn’t going to let her in. Then she failed to qualify. Before heading home Cobb, as she’s frequently known to do, went perusing through the infield, mingling with fans. During her adventures with individuals representing her sponsor, as well as Kuykendall who was bummed about the whole ordeal, Cobb turned to him with her trademark cheerful attitude.
“I got to thinking about how it would be someone’s dream to go to Talladega, have a weekend in the infield,” she said, telling Kuykendall, “do you realize our worst days is most people’s best days? It would be somebody’s best day to be in Talladega or get to drive a racecar around Talladega.”
Cobb’s boyfriend, who works for a well off team, joked it all was a sign to turn around and go home. That he’d hide under the covers and cry, not showing his face again.
“It’s like, why? If we can still get there, we’ll do it,” she confidently said about her team. “It makes the good days that much sweeter.”
Martinsville wasn’t one of those, due in part from the Talladega carryover. The broken hauler meant the Talladega truck didn’t get back to the shop until Wednesday afternoon and she only has one Dodge engine. That engine was in that truck, a superspeedway truck, which she was forced into taking to Martinsville.
“That’s never going to do well,” Cobb admitted. “Completely different.” But because the team’s committed to running every race and having new sponsors for the event, they made the trip.
“It was an ill feeling knowing that I was going to come in and be that slow and sort of look that stupid,” Cobb said.
“When I spun in practice, that was kind of fun. I tweeted it and I guess that’s something different about my personality and really authentic and somebody was like – I don’t know if he meant it in a good way or a bad way – but he said, I’ve never heard a racecar driver say spinning out was fun. It’s like, hey, it’s like a burnout! You just have to put your mind in the right place and get through it.”
Things weren’t always this bad but unfortunately the good days are a few years past. JJCR made headlines for positive reasons in 2010 when they ran their first full-time season. She made each and every race with a season best finish of 14th at both Texas and Darlington. At season’s end she was 17th in points.
That year Cobb ran Roush Yates engines with three that were rotated in the stable which were maybe 15 horsepower down (today it’s 40 she said) from those of the best trucks. For the 2011 season she didn’t change a thing but blew engines and couldn’t figure out why. A sixth in the season opening race at Daytona was the only highlight, making just 12 of 25 races that year.
“It really went downhill when I let another driver come in and use my tin number after Daytona and I went and tried to do the full-time Nationwide deal and we just depleted any last amount of resources we had trying to do that,” Cobb said. “So the mistake was being lured into trying to run a full season in Nationwide and being too bull headed to do an about face and go back to Trucks when I should have just went back to Trucks when that deal fell apart at Bristol (the start-and-park controversy).
“At that point, we should have just went ok, we’re a Truck team, we’re not a Nationwide team. But I had taken Nationwide owners points, everything. It was hard to just go back, not that I consider Trucks to be a lower level or anything like that, we were just committed in that direction and I have a real hard time once I say I’m going to do something.”
When 2012 came around and now 2013, the hole was much deeper. The trucks are the same ones she started with and now without a good engine program, having switched from Roush-Yates after 2011.
“I’ve seen people on Twitter accusing me of start-and-parking, it’s like uh, no, we just blow that many engines up, I promise,” Cobb said with a chuckle. “The equipment gets older. When I first started and we bought our first allotment of cars and engines, everything was new and over time it gets worn out. You have to replenish it and we just haven’t had the resources to replenish it.”
It might not have surprised anyone then if Cobb packed it all in and said she was done. Certainly not after the legal problems began when Cobb said 90 percent of her racing possessions were taken. Things she contests were clearly hers. Yet, somehow she continued to show up at every track.
“The circumstances and the challenges we’ve had this year, that were brought upon our team specifically to be malicious, I’ve had to battle through a lot of walk the talk, from a spiritual standpoint,” she said. “The whole turn the other check. I didn’t pass with flying colors but I did a pretty damn good job. Even my mind, not letting my mind go there. Really fun thoughts of revenge, you just got to make them go away.
“But what that did for me is amazing, in terms of if you can overcome that as a team and as a person, I feel invincible. It sucks at first but after a while it just strengthens you to no end … I got to think that in the end, we will be better off.”
The pitch in her voice and glow came back to Cobb when she thought about the future. She’ll continue with her non-profit Driven2Honor organization in 2014, honoring female military members, as well as raising funds for homeless female vets. Using her truck as a platform for the cause.
So Cobb has to keep going. Not only for herself but those she’s doing it for. The new season is a new start, away from the bad decisions that were made, the bad group of people they had surrounded themselves with. A time to regroup and then build on what she started back in 2010.
“I’m just famous enough to walk up and introduce myself and people are nice to me,” Cobb said about her life and those she’s come in contact with, the ones who continue to remain loyal through it all.
“But not famous enough that the whole campground starts to bombard me. I’m in a really sweet spot right now that I’d like to stay in and keep doing the best that I can and having fun.”
So back out into the Martinsville cold she went, still clad in her firesuit. Meeting the team over on the backstretch where the hauler was parked, being loaded up. Perhaps a sad reminder, but Cobb ran over and grabbed the tire rack and pushed it into the truck. Martinsville the past, Texas the future and bringing with it another weekend of living the NASCAR dream.