NASCAR driver,” Joey Dennewitz, NASCAR’s new managing director of the weekly and

“Right now, I could spend three hours walking you through how to become a NASCAR driver,” Joey Dennewitz, NASCAR’s new managing director of the weekly and touring series, said. “And at the end of the day, I could be dead wrong. Some can find a different path, a different way to do it.” Dennewitz has spent his life in racing and joined NASCAR about a year ago. He said that making the sport as accessible as possible, breaking down the barriers of entry, is the easiest way to grow the sport. And what can NASCAR do to help with that? Making the information on how to join regional series, how to participate in NASCAR, as public and accessible as possible. “Knocking down those barriers of entry, especially through information,” he said, “is the thing that drives me every day to show up at work.

THE DIFFICULT FINANCES OF NASCAR It’s true there’s not a concise answer to the aforementioned question of how to become a NASCAR driver. But there are people who know how to turn promising young drivers into the faces of NASCAR. One of those guys is Lorin Ranier, the head of Chevrolet’s driver development program. Ranier has spent his life in racing. His father, Harry, is a former NASCAR team owner. Lorin was a spotter for decades who later played a big role in the careers of Tony Stewart and Kyle Larson and others before creating the driver development program he runs today.

One of his most recent success stories is of Sam Mayer — who Ranier met when Mayer was 11 years old with the goal of joining a NASCAR national series when he turned 18. (Mayer did this, by the way, when he signed with JR Motorsports in the Xfinity Series in June 2021. Mayer made the Xfinity Series Championship 4 this past season at 20 years old.)

Part of the initial conversation, too, involves a simple question Ranier asks: “Can you financially handle this?” It’s no secret that racing cars is expensive. Starting at the Legends level, if families want to run a national schedule, that’s going to cost “anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000” a year, Ranier said. That number only increases as prospective drivers ascend in their careers and makes obtaining sponsorships vital. For instance, running a national season at the Super Late Model level, which is considered the premier division of asphalt short track racing in the U.S., could cost upward of $250,000, all expenses included, Ranier said. Racing being an expensive sport, Ranier explained, isn’t a new phenomenon.

It’s a Sunday morning in December in Pensacola, Florida, a few hours before one of the biggest short-track races in the country called the Snowball Derby. TJ is in the Five Flags Speedway infield talking about one of his favorite people — Andrew “Bubba” Pollard — who also happens to be one of the greatest short-track pavement racers of all-time.

 

Pollard has never won this race. His “big one.” In this way, he draws comparisons to Dale Earnhardt and the late legend’s longtime struggles winning the Daytona 500. Pollard could draw this comparison in other ways, too, perhaps: Rarely do you see the construction-worker-by-day, 36-year-old Senoia, Georgia, native climb into the corrugated chassis he and his family built and not summon Super Late Model magic. Rarely does a crowd not follow Pollard around the racetrack. Racing has been in Pollard’s family for generations, but rarely, too, does Bubba’s last name yield special treatment. The only name that seems to do that around here is “Redneck Jesus,” the nickname he reluctantly accepted after a driver called him that years ago.