More on Jennifer Jo Cobb soap opera
That episode earned Cobb a ride with Rick Ware Racing for Saturday's Nationwide race at Auto Club Speedway. Cobb qualified 40th and on lap 20 she spun off of turn four towards the infield. The spin flattened her tires and her splitter dug into the grass but the damage was minimal.
19 laps later — and 11 laps after she received the Lucky Dog on the next caution — Cobb was out of the race. The official reason on the NASCAR score sheet? Handling, a common reason for retirement listed by many cars that start-and-park, the exact practice that Cobb protested at Bristol. (If you're new to NASCAR, starting and parking is a practice of qualifying for a race and pulling off of the track in the early laps to save money on tires, engine wear and crew costs, among other things.)
After Bristol, Rick Russell, who owned the car that Cobb was supposed to drive in that race, filed suit against Cobb for breach of contract and the two are currently feuding over items that were found in a storage shed.
Maybe the damage to the car at ACS was more than met the eye and the car wasn't drivable. But if that was the case, why wasn't "accident" or "suspension" given as the reason for retirement? Putting "handling" on the score sheet leaves a lot open for interpretation.
Sure, Cobb didn't have a chance of winning Saturday's race without the help of a Talladega-style big one that took out the rest of the competition but it was her chance to show the NASCAR world that still cared about her case against starting-and-parking that she was sticking to her principles once again. Instead, she completed 38 of the scheduled 200 laps and we really don't know why. Yahoo! Sports
03/23/11 The owner of 2nd Chance Motorsports has filed a police report alleging larceny charges against Jennifer Jo Cobb, the driver who walked away from his Nationwide Series car five minutes before the start of Saturday's race at Bristol Motor Speedway over a start-and-park issue.
Rick Russell alleged that Cobb and crew chief Steve Kuykendall stole $16,000 worth of race car parts from his Mooresville, N.C. facility. Russell said police found about half of the missing parts on Sunday in a storage bin used by Cobb not far from the shop.
"Both her and her crew chief said they didn't know how it got there," Russell said. "I'm in the race parts-selling business. There were containers of parts that came right off the shelves with the prices still marked on them."
Cobb said the storage units belonged to Russell and that he agreed to let her and Kuykendall move some of the parts there while their partnership existed to clear space in the shop.
She said there was no attempt to steal anything and that she told Russell on Sunday to take all the parts that were his.
"I'm not sure how you steal something from someone when you move it from their property A to their property B," Cobb said. "It's just him trying to stir up more trouble. I'm not concerned. He's just trying to rattle us.
"Picture a divorce. You move out of house and accidentally take the ex-wife's favorite hair brush you both use. That's what this is like."
Mooresville police could not be reached, but Russell said arrests would be made. Cobb said neither she nor Kuykendall have been served a warrant and she doesn't expect one.
"His name is on the storage unit," Cobb said. "How can he accuse us of stealing something when it was just transferred from their shop to their storage unit? It was just a matter of freeing up space." ESPN