Future of NASCAR puts on show on California short track

[August 25, 2018]  DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The newest hopefuls invited to the Toyota Motorsports Driver Combine this week included a list of promising young female racers with nicknames such as "Holleywood" and résumés that include beating Jeff Gordon and Travis Pastrana in a charity go-kart race.

They have dirt-racing backgrounds, have won late-model championships and go-kart trophies, and hail from both coasts and places in between -- from North Dakota and Oklahoma to Washington state and Georgia.

They all met up at California's Irwindale Speedway for some on-track competition and some off-track assessment. All eight up-and-comers -- six females and two males, ranging in age from 13 to 23 -- loaded with equal parts high talent and high aspiration, chasing their dreams.

Thirteen year-old Jesse Love, the youngest driver at the combine and a Menlo Park, Calif., native, won the 50-lap Championship Race to wrap the three-day combine on Wednesday. He bested 18-year old Brittney Zamora of Kennewick, Wash., and 16-year olds Tanner Carrick (Lincoln, Calif.) and Presley Truedson (Grand Forks, N.D.) in the finale.

While Love, a short-track racer, took home the checkered flag, all the young racers left the combine with invaluable intangibles that may very well help them into a NASCAR career in the near future. Certainly, they made a mark on the Toyota executives there to evaluate the talent in this unique setting.

"It was awesome and it was ridiculously good," said Jack Irving, director of Team and Support Services for Toyota Racing Development USA.

"All the kids were awesome. To go through the last two days and everything they were put through, all the sport science stuff that they had to deal with and then come out here and run as many laps as they did. ... They did amazing.

"The competition was really good and they raced really clean, which was nice and that wasn't something that I totally expected. It was a good day and the kids that had a little bit of adversity in the beginning did a really good job bouncing back and that was definitely something we wanted to see."

Zamora, who won the 2017 Northwest Super Late Model Series championship and currently runs Super Late Models in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series at Washington's Evergreen Speedway, was certainly proud of her effort -- and hopeful of perhaps a "big picture" career payoff.

"My biggest goal was to get into the championship race," said Zamora, who advanced thanks to her qualifying race win.

"All eyes are on that race. It's technically the average of the best four people out here. You definitely want the opportunity to get more laps and be seen in front of people like Jack Irving and [Irwindale Speedway co-owner] Tim Huddleston and all of the Toyota affiliation.

"The more they can be watching you, the more you can prove yourself to them. That's definitely a big goal of mine."

It's safe to say, that was the goal shared by all who were invited. That list included an impressive and diverse sample of the country's young talent. In addition to Love, Zamora, Carrick and Truedson, were Californian Maria Cofer, 19; Holley Hollan, 16, of Oklahoma; Jessica Dana, 23, of Charlotte, N.C.; and Lexi Gay, 17, of Canton, Ga.

Under the watchful and discriminating eyes of Toyota Racing executives, the drivers went through a pretty intense schedule. There was classroom training on Monday, eight practice sessions and a pair of qualifying sessions on Tuesday, followed by four 75-lap races and culminating with a 50-lap Championship Race on Wednesday.

If perhaps a bit intimidating on paper, the intense schedule was something the participants genuinely appreciated. This was "Showtime."

"The knowledge, time and talent that the guys who were helping us have, beats a trophy," said "Holleywood" Hollan, a 16 year-old micro sprint and midget driver.

"That's stuff you can never really get taken away. You can't lose that. Sometimes it's better to not have a materialistic award at the end. I feel like I have gained a lot in the combine as well as a lot of other people. Even the drivers who race asphalt full-time, I feel like they've taken a lot from this and Toyota has it going on. ...

"It's pretty special to see what they've been doing with everyone. And to see this firsthand, I knew it was special, but seeing it firsthand is pretty awesome."

Another of the combine's invitees, Dana, was a 2012 member of NASCAR's Drive for Diversity Program. She is the driver who beat Pastrana and Gordon in a charity kart race as a 15-year old, and she came away from this week's Toyota experience feeling grateful for the opportunity and optimistic about its benefits. Just the invite was an encouraging sign for her career.

"It was an honor to be a part of this," said Dana, who is racing late models on the East Coast now. "Every up-and-coming driver wants to be affiliated with Toyota because the amount they put into their development program and its drivers.

"It's such a big opportunity and they've helped us out so much. Being able to come here to a track I've never seen before and cars I've never even heard about before, I've learned so much."

The good news for all the participants is that not only did they learn a lot in the ultimate racing crash course, but the Toyota executives left the experience feeling equally as educated about some of the country's brightest young talent -- having put the combine participants through some legitimately tough trials.

The end result could be a win-win situation -- opportunity for the drivers and a continued legacy of success for Toyota.

"This far-exceeded any sort of expectation that I had," Irving said. "The value to us as a program is real and that's just not something that I completely expected.

"I thought we'd see a few things, but then to walk out of this and go, 'They are all really good.' There's all different things that everybody can work on, but they're all really good."

--By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service. Special to Field Level Media.

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