It’s an interview and a quick photo gallery with guy who drives the hauler for Jimmie Johnson’s No. 48, Jim “Tiny” Pollard. (At least he drove for them last season; he’s not listed on the crew roster at NASCAR’s media Web site.)
Among the highlights:
• It’s a 52-hour drive from the Hendrick Motorsports complex in Charlotte to Infinion Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. Pollard says it with the confidence of a man who’s timed the drive — especially since the just-completed drive to Fontana is “40-some hours.”
• Seventy-five thousand miles may sound like a lot, but Pollard says that’s actually not so much when you average that out over a full year.
• Pollard considers himself no different than any other trucker hauling freight. That certainly is laudable, but you can bet he turns heads driving down the highway. And, as I’ve also said before, I’d bet that few folks are driving a rig as nice as his with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment in the back.
Fans, of course, care about the drivers and the owners and the crew chiefs. That’s the deal; they’re the point men and that’s how it works. But there are so many support people behind the scenes, there’s got to be a hundred great stories waiting to be told.
I think about the time I interviewed Woodbridge native Keith Eads, now a tire specialist for J.J. Yeley at Gibbs Racing. Eads, kind of on a whim, begged for any job he could get with a low-level team; he snared one and eventually parlayed it into a gig with Roush Racing and now Gibbs.
It’s a great story, risking everything for a chance at your dream. Eads made it work.
And it’s hard to imagine there aren’t many more folks like him in the NASCAR garage.