KANSAS CITY, Kan. – NASCAR Gander Outdoors Truck Series mainstay Jennifer Jo Cobb doesn’t shy away from that she’s almost 46 years old.
Climbing aboard her No. 10 Chevrolet Silverado on a weekly basis, Cobb knows that she’s competing against drivers that are more than half her age in top-tier equipment but the Kansas City, Kan. native says she’s content with her program in the Truck Series and continues to look five years down the road of her small operation turning laps across a 10-month span.
But with a lot of chatter about the short field for Friday night’s Digital Ally 250, Cobb explains how she has been able to keep her underfunded team afloat despite the dark times – but also embrace the positive outlook.
Said Cobb, “Here’s the deal. When you come to race you can do one of two things. I can go out there and I could raise $100,000 and I could throw it all on one to four races and I could run a lot better than I’m running right now. My vision is long term.
“I love what I’m doing. I love being a part of the series each and every week. I love the challenge on both the business side and on the track. We’re figuring on. Performance suffers because we don’t have that kind of money. But, we’re here for years, years and years.”
While some have criticized the Ilmor engine for not being a cost-saving measure as some anticipated, Cobb defended the spec motor saying her team would be further behind without it.
“The Ilmor has definitely helped things,” added Cobb. “It’s forced me to spend more money, but we would be so obsolete without it. We all have the same engine but there’s so many things besides horsepower that make a truck go in circles really fast. It’s the people, it’s the parts that you bolt onto it and it’s taken Ilmor to the chassis dyno and they tweak this and tweak that. We’ll get there.”
Cobb says she could play near the front of the field with her budget that is less than a million dollars and uptick her performance significantly – but it would divert away from her mission to be part of NASCAR and the Truck Series long term.
“A typical truck budget for a season is 3.5 million dollars and our budget comes in somewhere between $600,000 – 700,000,” mentioned Cobb. “We’re just the ones trying to survive and improve.
“You see a lot of teams just come and throw a lot of money at it right off the bat and the next thing you know they are out of money. And it’s a lot of harder to race 10th to 15th because there’s more wrecks in that range and so you see a lot of those guys not here because they wrecked.
“We all want to go out there and perform, trust me I do too. But I also want to be here in five more years, and I want to continue to see my team grow. I’ve just had the patience to grow my team slowly. Sometimes, we go backwards, but we always bounce back. I think our team does that well.
“I feel this year more than any other a big satisfaction about the direction of our team. For the first time, we have two trucks on the ground in the race with two Ilmor engines and so we’re definitely growing and going in the right direction, but it takes time.
“I see no end in sight from driving. I still physically feel fantastic and I’m very comfortable behind the wheel. I love every part of it. Love the travel, love every aspect of it.”
As for her long-term five-year vision, Cobb believes her approach is simple and achievable.
“Remaining solid in the Truck Series, hopefully becoming a top-10 contender more often, traveling the world and sorta opening this box up to do some more fun and exciting things. I feel like I’m just getting started after all this time to be honest.”
While fighting the financial pressures of running a Truck Series team, Kansas is a particularly tough weekend for her after this will be the first traditional Mother Day’s weekend race without her mother, Connie Cobb who quickly passed away from Pancreatic cancer last August.
“It’s hard being home the first Mother Day’s (weekend) and she helped so much so much in the garage area with the hospitality and obviously it’s a huge void,” said Cobb who fought back tears. “I invited a lot more of my family to come with us this time, I know that’s what she would want me to do to be surrounded by them.
“It will be a little more of a crazy crowd than normal,” she joked. “It will be crazy. It will be fun. “My dad said to me one time, you’re Mom just wanted you to be happy. I keep reminding myself of that. Like the best thing I can do to honor her is to be happy.”
Cobb said it was about a month from the official diagnosis of her mother’s illness to her passing.
“We realized all that pain she was having for several months before that was because of the cancer. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most painful and quick moving cancers. She just kept looking at us and saying how much longer do I have to put up with this? Because she was in so much pain. We are grateful it was quick.”
Week in and week out through her trials and tribulations both on and off the track, Cobb has turned to the great Walt Disney for inspiration and tries to live her life with one his famous quotes, “It’s kinda fun to do the impossible.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
