Jennifer Jo Cobb has been a veteran driver in NASCARs third series, the truck series for quite some time and has put down many laps on some of the toughest tracks in the series. Cobb has run for Derrick Copes’ team as well as her own team. Her finishes have not been anything incredible but given her equipment.
This past week Rick Ware Racing announced that they would have Jen Jo Cobb run a hot seat race at Talladega SuperSpeedway but got her bid rejected by NASCAR. NASCAR never gave a cut and dry reason as to why they would not let her run but there are some theories. Bob Pockrass came out and said that NASCAR is pushing heavily that they have not rejected the bid due to her and Norm Bennings incident at Richmond this past weekend, but it seems real convenient that they announced they would reject her bid just a few days after the incident. This is not an uncommon practice as we have seen some drivers be forced to run races or be flat out rejected to run races, especially on the super speedways. Recently James Davidson had his bid rejected for not having enough experience. They also made Hailee Deegan run a truck race at Kansas so she could be eligible for a full time ride this season.
In my opinion NASCAR needs to be able to give us a clear indication of what makes you an eligible diver to run in each series, weather it’s based off success, skill, or experience, they need to make it clear what they want from their drivers so incidents like this do not happen more in the future where drivers have bids rejected with no clear cut reasoning other than they did not want to see her race. This is also an unusual thing to see as we have drivers like Cody Ware in the field where he has, time and time again been seen wrecking people on purpose out of anger, something we can not have at dangerous tracks like Talladega.
It will be interesting to see who RWR has driven the car and how NASCAR handles situations like this going forward as more drivers look to get hot seat spots throughout the season.
The Slow Restart 