JAY COX
ALONG WITH HIS FATHER, COX ROLLS TO THE
STARTING LINE WITH CREW MEMBERS DENNIS
BENNETT, DOUG ASKEW, ANDREW MORTON
AND DEAN “UNCLE SI” VICK, WITH EACH MAN
TAKING ON A SPECIFIC AND CONSISTENT ROLE.
Don’t rule out NHRA [Pro Mod] because
I’m going to tell you something – and you can
put this in quotes too – Stevie Jackson’s
over there and there ain’t nobody else in the
world I like to slap around more than him.”
two and the whole field’s picked up six or seven
hundredths. The whole field speeding up and
running as fast as they have is probably not what
I saw happening.
What do you think has contributed the most
to the whole field picking up performance
like that?
Everybody that’s out there racing has that num-
ber one tuner they’ve hired and paid. Me, I kind
of do it on my own and Tommy Franklin kind of
does it on his own. That’s probably what’s the
most rewarding and the most gratifying to me. I
get a lot of help from people. Don’t think I don’t.
But at the end of the day I’m the one standing
behind the computer making the call whether we
do this or do that to make it go to the next round.
Charlie’s been behind me. Brandon Switzer’s been
behind me this year. And in the years past Billy
Stocklin had helped me a lot and Danny Perry
helped me a lot when I first started out and didn’t
know nothing. I appreciate all the help, but at the
end of the day on race day I’m the man standing
there looking at the computer.
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I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Is that a major point of pride for you?
When you take on the job of tuning it and
driving it, man, it’s a big role and I do take a lot
of pride in that. That’s probably what I take the
most pride in: tuning it and driving it. I drive
the truck and trailer, I load it, I wash it, I drive
it to the race, I unload it, I set it up, I fix the car,
I service the car, I tune the car, I drive the car. At
the end of the day, I take it home, rebuild it, put
it all back together. I take a lot of pride in that.
I don’t want to take nothing away from nobody
because I’ve had a lot of help, but there just ain’t
a lot of people that race at this level that does
everything, every bit of it. I’ve been forced to
do that my whole life and I ain’t saying nothing
bad, but I’ve been forced to do that my whole life
because I’m not just really wealthy and can hire
somebody, but at the end of the day I’m kind of
glad that I grew up that way because it’s made
me who I am. Man, I really enjoy it. If something
goes wrong, I know how to fix it.
It sounds crazy – I’ve never had the opportunity
to drive a fuel Funny Car, but if I had an oppor-
tunity to drive one, hell, I’d want to drive it, work
on it, drive the rig, I want to tune it myself. That’s
the mindset I have. I want to do it all because
then there ain’t no finger to point. If I was just
a driver and I cut a .020 light every time and
I lost, then I could point a finger at somebody
and say, “Hey man, you made me lose, you didn’t
speed this thing up.” Here, all the blame is back
on me. And it’s fun. It’s a lot of pressure, but I
enjoy pressure. I thrive off it.
Speaking of pressure, you’ve faced spon-
sorship woes at various points in your Pro
Nitrous career to the point where you once
had to scale back your schedule and consid-
er parking your car. How have you attracted
what seems to be a really solid group of backers
this season?
Man, I don’t really have a good answer for that.
To be honest, it’s very hard. The last couple years
I’ve had to piece stuff together. I don’t know the
right answer, I really don’t. I’ve tried to be who I
am and if anybody’s ever contacted me and shown
interest in racing, I just try to be honest with them
and lay it all out there on the line and be who I
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