If all goes according to plan, Torrance Jackson expects an earthquake. An infield set ablaze. Maybe the frontstretch fence will be toppled over by spectators — their cold hands and cowboy booted feet climbing in a collective I-can’t-believe-we-saw-that high.

Jackson isn’t alone in these predictions of mayhem.

“I said, ‘Tim,’” — as in Tim Bryant, the racetrack owner — “‘what would happen if Bubba wins today?’” Jackson, who goes by TJ, says.

He then smiles.

“And he say, ‘TJ, I’m probably gonna have to build a new track.’”

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.

“He’s got the redneck part right,” Pollard would later tell The Observer, shyly. “But that’s about it.”

Among all these rarities, though, there’s a glaring “never.”

Never has Pollard run in NASCAR, the pinnacle of stock car racing in America.

The fact he’s never raced in NASCAR full-time is a reality he’s made peace with now, Pollard says. But still, as the Snowball Derby’s weekend begins, you’re left to wonder:

Why not?

Figuring out the blueprint for breaking into NASCAR

On Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET, FOX), the motorsports world will focus its attention on Daytona International Speedway for the 63rd running of the Daytona 500.

Part of what gives the Great American Race its unique magic is the fact that it’s equal parts elusive and there-for-the-taking: For some drivers, the Daytona 500 is the only Cup race they’ll ever win; for a few Hall of Famers, it’s one they never do.

But just like winning at Daytona presents long odds — so, too, does running in a NASCAR race at all.

“I don’t feel like I would be here if I didn’t have a lot of people do a lot of things for me,” NASCAR Cup Series driver Ross Chastain said at his end-of-season press conference in November 2022, a punctuation mark to one of the more special Cinderella runs through the NASCAR playoffs in recent memory. “I didn’t just win races at a local short track and get here on my own. I had so many people put funds toward me, put rides, put their name out there to get me a ride, go to a team owner and vouch for me.”

Chastain’s rise from eighth generation watermelon farmer to Cup Series contender is well documented. After working on a tight budget in the short tracks in Florida, he broke into NASCAR in 2011, driving on a part-time basis. His first win was in 2018 in the Xfinity Series. He only got his first shot in Cup in 2021 when a driver was unexpectedly fired and he was next in line.

“We didn’t own a team, we didn’t know what we were doing,” Chastain said of he and his family, in that same press conference. “We spent a lot of our own money to get here. And it’s not talked about enough in this sport because it’s kind of the ugly truth — that you have to sacrifice a lot.”

Breaking into NASCAR can be a tough endeavor. It’s an expensive sport. Kids are allowed to compete at the Bandolero Bandit division starting at 7 years old and can jump into a Legends Car, a step above Bandaleros, at 10 years old. And that’s just the beginning — before those drivers filter through many other racing series and vehicles en route to a prospective career. It’s a long and consuming commitment.

But there’s another issue, too, that many families with children who want to be race car drivers have probably run into.

There isn’t a concise answer to the question:

How does my son or daughter become a NASCAR driver?

“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.)

Ranier fields calls from parents with regularity who have questions about what it would take for their child to make it as a racer. In Mayer’s case, it required traveling across the country as a 13-year-old every weekend to different tracks.

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.

“The bottom line is somebody has been paying for this all along,” he said.

The great race car drivers ‘who never make it’

It’s not an uncommon story for drivers to run out of funding and see their race car driving dreams run dry. Greg Van Alst has nearly given up on his racing dreams several times because of financial issues, wrecking out his final car or what have you, but he’s continually been pulled back into the sport. Van Alst is now a racer in a semi-pro league that feeds into NASCAR called the ARCA Menards Series. At various points in his past and at various racing levels, he said, teams would either pass him over or he’d be replaced by drivers with sponsorships who traveled with them.

Troubles with sponsorships still follow Van Alst. Last February, he won the season-opening ARCA race at Daytona International Speedway, and in a teary moment of catharsis, he yelled, “This is for all the short-track racers out there that don’t think you can get to this level; I worked my ass off to get here and we did it!” About 11 months later, a few weeks before this weekend in Daytona, he had to take to Twitter to ask if people could help him find sponsorships for the car he won in a year ago.

Even at the highest level, the idea of money impacting who gets which opportunity isn’t something NASCAR movers and shakers shy away from. Hall of Famer Tony Stewart, during the Stewart-Haas Racing announcement that Josh Berry would succeed the retiring Kevin Harvick, told reporters in June that he’s “not interested in some kid’s father coming in and buying their way into the Cup Series.” Kyle Busch, one of the winningest NASCAR drivers and one of the sport’s straightest shooters, shared a similar sentiment in May, a few days before the 2023 Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

“There are a lot of great, talented race car drivers out there who have never made it and will never make it,” Busch said. “I mean, it’s just fact. When I’ve raced Super Late Models across the country, I’ve raced against guys who are very, very talented and well capable of being able to make it up to the big time, but they never get there. They never have the right funding behind them or whatever it might be. Names off the top of my head: Scotty Hantz out of Indiana. Mike Rowe out of Maine. Bubba Pollard down here in the South. Fortunately Josh Berry (who rose up from short-track-badass obscurity to NASCAR Cup Series fame thanks to an improbable story) has made it, per se.

“So it’s guys like that I got the chance to go race against and have some fun with, racing against the best of the best across the country. Sometimes when you’re here in Cup, or in Xfinity, or whatever, the talent isn’t quite as grand as maybe it could be if you had all those types of guys here. It would be a lot tougher.

“But that’s opinion, so who knows?”

‘God had a plan for me’

It’s still a few hours before the Snowball Derby, on that sunny Pensacola Sunday in December, and Bubba Pollard feels good about his chances. A win here would mean a lot, he says. I eventually asked the question to Bubba directly: Why never NASCAR?

“I think it’s all about timing, where you’re at in your life, meeting the right people,” Pollard responds. He adds, carefully, thoughtfully: “My family, we’ve been fortunate. I enjoy doing what I do now. I love it. It’s who we are. I feel like NASCAR can get caught up — it’s so political in the corporate world. And God had a plan for me, I feel like, where I wasn’t built for that, maybe. It was in His plan for me to not move on to the next level, and I’m happy with what I’m doing. I enjoy it.”

Today, Pollard admits that all he wanted was a shot. That he just “wanted to do it one time.” He said he’s nevertheless happy for the short-track stars who are getting their shots in NASCAR — like Josh Berry and Ryan Preece — and he hopes “they prove to these guys there’s a lot of talent out here at the short-track level that never gets recognized.”

A few hours later, the Snowball Derby concluded. Bubba had the fastest car and charged for the lead late — but got wrecked out of contention in the final five laps. The rapturous bliss TJ and Tim Bryant forecasted would be delayed another year. No Dale Earnhardt-Daytona 500 moment.

Still, though, even an hour after the checkered flag flew, Pollard was being greeted by friend after friend, daughter after daughter, fan after fan. By the time the infield cleared out, you realized all spectators cared about was admiring the rarity he is. They were unconcerned about what he’d never done.

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