Jennifer Jo Cobb spent the Sunday of what should have been her NASCAR Cup Series debut getting so dirty working on her truck she didn’t want to get in her car afterward. It was precisely the distraction she needed because even though the race from Talladega Superspeedway was on in the background at her shop, she couldn’t bring herself to pay attention.
“Saturday night going into Sunday was the hardest, and I just wanted (Sunday) to be over with,” Cobb tells RACER. “I just needed (Sunday) to go away.
“To give so much to this sport and (what) this sport has given to me. To have felt like a solid fixture in this sport. I have dedicated my entire life to this, and to have the president of NASCAR tell the media that I just wasn’t ready for this race, but that I was ready six years ago…”
From Cobb’s standpoint, the timeline of the announcement of her planned Cup debut to learning that her entry failed to gain approval from the series is what’s most peculiar. As she explains it, the Rick Ware Racing entry for the No. 15 Chevrolet was submitted with Cobb’s name listed as the driver and accepted. The license application was countersigned and sent back, and Cobb has a copy of a Cup Series driver agreement signed by John Bobo (NASCAR vice president of racing operations). The car’s paint scheme was also approved. With that done, the team announced on the Tuesday before Richmond (over a week before Talladega) that Cobb would be the first female since 2018 to run a Cup Series race.
“I received a phone call on Thursday afternoon, two full days after the announcement,” she says. “I was given a very vague reason (why) I was inactive. It was Brett Bodine (who called), and I truly thought he had me confused with someone else because I’ve raced consistently for 10-plus years; every single (Truck) race. I was confused by the language, and I was so flustered. I was driving, so I pulled over, and I didn’t know what to say.”
Rick Ware told her the team had been told the same and was looking into it. Cobb stayed silent as things progressed behind the scenes.
“I truly went through two days thinking it was a mistake,” Cobb says. “We were all just baffled.”
It was revealed the Monday leading into Talladega that Cobb was not approved to participate. NASCAR acknowledged she had been previously approved, but requirements and performance standards change over time. In Cobb’s case, it was cited that ‘experience’ doesn’t always equate laps completed, and officials didn’t think she was ready for the premier series.
“I feel like I belong,” she says. “I feel like even though I don’t have money to compete up front, I compete with my peers that have the same budget level that I do, and there are many races within the race. If you don’t want the lower-budget teams there, then you’re going to end up with a 16-truck field, and then when 10 of them wreck out …
“We belong; we have a purpose. We work our ass off to be there. We work harder than the other teams because we have less people. We have less money. When we need a part, we don’t pick up the phone and order it; we call all the used parts places, try to find it at 50% of the cost. It takes us 10 times longer to repair or build a Truck. Everything is harder. They’re harder to drive. And so, the biggest thing I say about this, whatever the excuse is, why weren’t all 40 of the drivers who participated on Sunday held to that same standard?”
If Cobb had been told she wasn’t approved before the announcement went to press, she wouldn’t be as hurt as she is now. Given how many people were involved in approving the entry blank, license, paint scheme, etc., Cobb believes NASCAR had plenty of time to inform her and Rick Ware of that decision.
Cobb also points to her past experiences of working through the approval process with drivers who have driven for her Truck team. In those cases, if the driver was not approved, they were given a path to approval. However, Cobb says she’s not received a path toward or invitation to reapply for Cup Series approval.
“Just said no,” Cobb says of NASCAR. “And took away my approval in the Cup Series for any track. I have never seen them do that.”
Cobb’s anger is borne from feeling she’s been disrespected, and she admits she spent last week in tears. Since the news broke, Cobb has heard from drivers, crew chiefs, owners, and others who have been outraged on her behalf. And while she initially never set out to run a Cup Series race, Cobb believes she can handle a Cup car and compete adequately around Cup drivers because she’s done so in the past when they’ve dipped into the Truck Series.
“Austin Dillon’s rookie year, I was a rookie,” Cobb says. “I’m on track with him a couple of years ago at Kentucky, and they’re like, ‘Hey, Austin’s got something on his grille, he’s going to get right up on your bumper and follow you, so hold your line.’ I’m like, ‘OK, cool.’
“Would he trust somebody who couldn’t handle a race car to do that? So, if I’m so inexperienced or dangerous to race with, why do they come race with me?”
A full-time Truck competitor since 2010, Cobb has run 217 races in the series. She earned a sixth-place finish at Daytona in 2011 and finished a career-best 16th in points in 2014. In seven of her 10 full seasons, Cobb has finished in the top 25 in points. Last year, she led 16 laps at Talladega, an accomplishment she believes should not be taken away just because time has passed.
There is no denying this saga has put a lot of attention on Cobb. Some might be hearing about the 47-year-old for the first time, and if that’s the case, don’t believe everything you read. For instance, Cobb is not, as Google might say, worth millions. Cobb pays herself $500 a week, and every other dime goes into her team.
“Because this is what I want to do,” said Cobb. “I love the life. I love the fans I meet; the people who tell me that I inspire them. I love traveling. I have so many friends in this sport that this is my life. I love it. So I don’t have to make a lot of money or amass a lot of net worth, and I haven’t. Everything goes back into the team. And nine times out of 10, those assets are crashed or blown up, and often not by me.”
A native of Kansas City, Kansas, Cobb grew up in a modest, lower-middle-class family. Joe, her father, dropped out of high school and owned a small auto repair shop for 35 years. Mom Connie, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2018, worked on an assembly line for General Motors, inspecting newly-painted bumpers.
Cobb calls them “really hard-working” parents who would’ve preferred she embarked on a profession with benefits and a steady paycheck, but Cobb didn’t go that route.
The racing bug bit her because Connie’s cousin raced, and when her parents went on their first date, and Joe found out about that, he asked to see the race car. Eventually, Joe started racing, and Cobb grew up at dirt tracks around the Midwest, tinkering on his cars and falling asleep in the driver’s seat. She began racing in 1991.
“I was a cheerleader; that’s how I became a girly-girl,” Cobb says. “My mom had me in dance and gymnastics, but I was always around race cars, and my mom used to yell at me that I was the only ballerina with grease under her nails. My dad said, ‘Look, you’re not just going to show up with your helmet and race; you’ve got to work on it. I’ve got to see the dedication.’ So I learned so much from working on them, and one of the biggest things is the respect it takes to get them to the track. I raced locally for 10 years.”
And she won. Cobb’s first victory came in 1993 in four-cylinder Pony Stock, and she also won in a Sportsman Late Model in 1997.
“I was the 2000 I-70 Speedway runner-up. I led it for much of the year,” says Cobb. “I had my first opportunity to race an ARCA car in 2002, and I finished 16th in that race. From 2002 to 2010, I had the opportunity to race just a few times a year. 2004 was my most successful year. I had three top-10s in three attempts in the ARCA Series at big tracks – Nashville, Chicago, and Kansas – and had my first opportunity in a Busch (now Xfinity) car at Homestead, and qualified 28th out of 55 cars. But when I started the race the car was so loose, and I wrecked pretty early on.
“I went back and got more experience and learned from that. In 2010 I had the opportunity to buy the assets of (the team she now owns), and then it was up to me to keep it alive and keep going. I learned so much about how you can race on other team’s used tires, make the budget stretch, and have been doing that ever since. It was never my goal to own the team, but I wanted to control how my sponsor’s dollars were being spent. I didn’t want just to hand the money over and hope they were bringing me their best (stuff).”
Three people work full-time for Cobb’s team. The shop where Cobb gets her hands dirty, located in Mooresville, North Carolina, is approximately 4,000-square feet. Payroll is an issue, of course. One of Cobb’s ways to keep costs down is to hire less-experienced staff.
“I tell them you’re not going to make a lot of money, but you’re going to get an education and a letter of recommendation and a resume that allows you to go on,” Cobb says. “Kyle Busch Motorsports’ tire guy started here. He worked at the YMCA, nobody would give him a chance, and he got his opportunity here. And it feels so good when you walk around the garage area and see those people, and they smile at you because they’re telling me, ‘Hey, thank you.’ I feel there’s a purpose (for me being in NASCAR).
“Driven2Honor is a pretty big purpose. That’s the not-for-profit I started. We don’t try to raise a lot of money because, as I said, I don’t have money, so it’s not a place for me to hide my money or anything. We give the VIP experience to female military members and her guest at each of our races. I can remember having a bad race or blowing a motor or wrecking, and you get back to the infield, and there are these two or three military women just smiling ear to ear because of the experience they had, and you go, ‘Wow, maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all.’”
For drivers in Cobb’s position, there is a race within a race. Drivers running mid to back of the pack need to be aware of their surroundings, particularly to the leaders. Cobb feels she is one of the best in that regard.
“They don’t mess with me, and they trust me; at the same time, I give them respect,” she says. “When they’re two-wide behind me, I’ll use the apron on the frontstretch to let them battle it out. Does that make my lap a little slower? Yeah, but for me, that’s the right thing to do. First and foremost, don’t mess up the outcome of a race, don’t be a menace. If I’m battling somebody for 29th and I’ve got the leaders behind me with 10 to go, I will give up that position because I plan to be here in the long run, and I want to have that respect.”
Pre-COVID, Cobb aimed for top-20 finishes. Back then, she would race on the tires the big teams practiced on. Tires cost $2,5000 a set, and Cobb can only afford about one set, and the average race purse is about $8,000 – $10,000 for most of the field. (She says it doesn’t vary much from 10th to 27th place). The pandemic doesn’t allow for qualifying, and Cobb starts in the back because of her points position.
“So, it used to be a top 20; I think things are so much tougher now a top 25 is the goal for us,” she said. “At Daytona this year, I qualified 16th of 46 trucks and finished 18th on the lead lap.”
Daytona and Talladega are where Cobb believes she can excel. Competing in the Truck Series is her focus, and the hope is to one day have a competitive team. Not being approved to run a Cup Series race has a trickle-down effect on that program.
“I had sponsors calling me, meetings set, to talk about sponsoring the truck team,” Cobb says. “My long-term goals in the sport, I know it’s been 10 years, and it hasn’t happened, but damn it, my motto is never give up. My long-term vision is to have a competitive truck team that I’m driving well into my 50s and run a couple of Cup races here and there, and that would bring attention to help my truck team.
“Many drivers – Spencer Boyd – they’re able to have that on their resume, and it can give you an advantage in getting in the door to sponsors. So, how do I now move forward and ask for sponsor meetings for my Truck, and have them Google me and go, the president of NASCAR said this about her, why would we take a meeting? It’s embarrassing.”
Cobb says it’s too soon to know whether she will reach back out to NASCAR and try to apply for Cup approval again. She does know that even though the wounds are raw and she questions what happened, she must practice what she preaches and march onward.
“I’m a motivational speaker all over the world,” says Cobb. “And I spoke for 30 days in Russia telling students, young adults, college, elementary school kids that your dreams are valid, don’t let anyone take them away, and if you persevere and you work hard enough, you’ll get that opportunity. This flies in the face of everything I’ve ever believed, and it’s completely knocked me on my ass and made me question everything. But I believe in my message to others, and so I have to find the strength to give myself that same message.
“There’s something not right here, and you want to sell everything and go away with your tail between your legs, but that’s not feeling like the right thing to do. Something has to come of this to make it make sense. So, I’m willing to ride this wave with as much dignity and respect for the sport as I can. But I think there’s a lot of good people in the sport, and I think there are some people who got it wrong.”