DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – With the help of the new NT1 Ilmor spec motor Jennifer Jo Cobb found herself in the lead draft during Friday night’s NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway.
While the benefit of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series’ new engine pack put the Kansas City, Kans. native in a welcoming spot, it also put her in a vulnerable position which ultimately led to the hardest crash of her NASCAR career.
On Lap 56, Grant Enfinger spun sideways and took nearly a half-dozen trucks with him. Cobb, running mid-pack attempted to avoid the carnage but found her No. 10 Chevrolet soon out of control and slamming the inside SAFER barrier driver-side first.
Gingerly emerging from her truck groggy, Cobb spent nearly an hour in the Daytona infield care center before treated and released with only bruising to her left arm.
“As you can imagine, they just want to be overly cautious to make sure everything is OK,” Cobb told Kickin’ the Tires. “Also had some bumps and things like that look kind of gross [laughs].”
Cobb initially tried to maneuver her truck to pit road but lost control.
“When I tried to swerve to drive around it, I thought, ‘Hey, go to pit road,’” she said. “I eased off the throttle, went toward pit road and it felt like I lost the rear. It went whacko.”
Cobb believes her arm hitting the steering wheel on impact caused the bruising.
“I fight to the end when I’m wrecking,” she added. “I’m going to hold on to the steering wheel right until the end. And right before the wall came up I thought, ‘Yeah, maybe not a bad day to get your hands up off the steering wheel.’ And I lunged forward and hit.”
Despite having a competitive truck, Cobb left the “World Center of Racing” with a totaled truck to the start the season. Her truck was the same chassis she wheeled to a career-best sixth in 2011 at Daytona, the best performance by a female in the series’.
The truck was named after a former crew member, her hauler driver who passed away from cancer shortly after netting her lone top-10 in Truck Series competition.
“The problem is we were fast,” she said. “We were up there with the fast guys. I knew better than to not really get up into the pack.”
Though Friday night’s incident puts Cobb’s team Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing behind the eight-ball heading to Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway next weekend, the 44-year-old is thankful she’ll have the opportunity to compete because of NASCAR’s strong safety innovative.
“You never know how you’re going to react to those things,” she said. “I’m happy to say I have complete and total faith in our trucks and our safety. NASCAR does a great job of making us safe. It doesn’t even shake me.
“It was a heck of a hard hit, but NASCAR has done so much to advance safety that I feel completely confident getting back in. It’s minor, trust me. We’re excited for Atlanta.”
Cobb carried sponsorship for Friday night’s season-opener from Think Realty.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
