TALLADEGA, Ala.: Jennifer Jo Cobb had considered Saturday afternoon’s Sugarlands Shine 250 as a perfect opportunity to thrust her Jennifer Jo Cobb Racing team into the spotlight in the NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series.
With a healthy Ilmor engine installed in her No. 10 Pit Stops For Hope Chevrolet Silverado, Cobb thought she had everything she needed to compete for 94 laps around the 2.66-mile superspeedway and contend for her second career top-10 finish.
And then Lap 8 came.
With oil sprayed on the track from another truck, Cobb got loose in the tri-oval sending her No. 10 for a slide with her locking down her vehicle in an attempt to avoid hitting something that would ruin her afternoon.
In the process of trying to save her race truck, she flat-spotted her tires. Bringing her truck to the attention of her pit crew, the team informed their driver that the tires were too damaged to return to competition.
Cobb typically doesn’t buy more than one set of tires on a superspeedway – planning to use tires from competitors late in the race who have been knocked out of competition. With no funds immediately available for Cobb, she sat on pit road watching the laps roar by – when two NASCAR fans staying on Talladega Blvd who happened to be nearby Cobb’s truck heard about the circumstances and jumped in and bought a set of tires at $2,400 – allowing Cobb to return to the race track and finish the race.
For Cobb, she was speechless about the selfless donation to her Mooresville, N.C-based team.
“For two laps my windshield was collecting oil and I was asking if NASCAR would investigate,” explained Cobb. “The next lap, I spun in the oil from another truck. It was a good save and I’m grateful for that.
“My spotter did an awesome job talking me through the save. They weren’t going to throw a caution but all four of my tires were flat-spotted, so I had to limp back to pit road.
“By the time one of the leaders slid through the oil and that’s when the caution and red flag came out. Meanwhile, we only had one set of tires — the ones that were on the truck. Normally, the big teams turn their tires in after practice, and we race on their used tires but this race they didn’t have to turn any in. We were going to get tires from them later after their first stop.”
While the field continued to race under green, Cobb said she sat in her truck buckled trying to think in her in head of any personal credit cards that would have enough credit limit for her to buy a set of tires.
“I was literally on pit road desperately calculating if I had a credit card somewhere that I could put one set of tires on,” she added.
“We just can’t afford to buy the amount of tires the big teams can. And I appreciate that they give us their old ones. Finally, a couple NASCAR fans that have a spot on the Talladega Boulevard were so nice to our team and chipped in and ran to Goodyear and bought us a set of tires.
“It was definitely one of the most humbling moments of my career. We had to wait for them to be mounted, the credit card to be processed, but we got it done and I headed back out on the track.”
Cobb said the fans wished to remain anonymous and while Cobb could have easily retired from the race and not risk getting caught up in something further on the race track, the generous gift allowed her to pick up six positions on the track – allowing some extra purse money to come in for the team and make the trek to Martinsville Speedway on Oct. 26.
“It’s truly the craziest scenario I’ve ever been a part of,” added Cobb who finished 27th. “We had a fast truck but being so many laps down, I didn’t think we would risk running in the pack and it was time to save the truck for Daytona but thanks to some great people we were able to pick up six positions and never give up.
“I’ll never forget it.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
