NASCAR: 1-on-1 With Bolen Motorsports Driver Jordan Anderson
NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Jordan Anderson recently spoke with BTF about his new team and the 2016 NASCAR season.
On January 27 it was announced that NASCAR Camping World Truck Series driver Jordan Anderson would be teaming up with Bolen Motorsports to pilot their No. 66 Chevy for the 2016 season. Anderson, 24, will be sponsored by the Columbia Metropolitan CVB and the Columbia Regional Sports Council from his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina.
Anderson, who got his starts racing karts at the age of eight, is known as an easygoing and friendly face to the fans, often interacting and hosting AMA sessions (AMA – Ask Me Anything) on Reddit.com’s NASCAR page. Anderson is making the switch from Mike Harmon Racing, where he ran 17 events in 2015 and finished 19th in the final points.
BTF: Recently it was announced that you were teaming with Bolen Motorsports to run the 2016 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season. Could you explain how that came about?
Jordan Anderson: It’s really a unique partnership. Jeff (Bolen) and myself first met back when we were racing Legends cars and he helped me out when I was running Dirt Late Models and NASCAR Late Models, and he actually came to Daytona and Atlanta, a couple of races last year.
You know, the operation we had last year was on a budget, and he would help us out as the year went on, and we kinda had this discussion at the end of the season and he was interested in getting a team going. He kinda worked through the off-season on trying to get some things together, and really, through the end of December and into early January a lot of the pieces just finally came into place and just clicked with myself being from the Columbia area and the Columbia, SC sponsorship.
The timing was perfect, and when we had the opportunity to jump and we just kind of made that phase jump where we just went in headfirst and just made it happen. It’s just really come together this past week.
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BTF: What’s it like to receive sponsorship from your hometown?
JA: I was raised in Columbia, grew up there, went to school there, family still lives there, and it’s just super unique to have your city behind you, also, all the people that you grew up with and know you. I’ve said it several times before, I’ve gotten to where I am in my racing career because of the people I grew up around and helped me, whether it was encouragement, prayer, financially, I’ve had a lot of people help me growing up because I come from a middle-class family. My dad’s in property management and my mom is a hairdresser.
Of course I’ve been able to pursue a dream I’ve had since I was six years old, and it’s been incredible to see what doors have been opened and what opportunities have been placed in front of me and how people over the years have shown their faith in me. It’s definitely a unique sport to be involved in, racing, and it does take help from other people. I’m just fortunate to have people behind me since I got started in racing.
It’s kind of like I’ve come full circle to have Columbia, SC on the truck and to have them behind us and have the help. It’s definitely unique, but it’s also super authentic. That’s why I’m so excited about it, because it’s something I believe in and I think it’s something that’s really going to take off this year.
BTF: What other sponsors do you have lined up for the 2016 season?
JA: Yeah. We’ve got a couple of things in the works right now for sponsors that helped out last year to have them come back on board. The way it sits right now Columbia will be a primary for roughly half the season and an associate for the other half.
So it’s definitely an active search to fill in the spots that we have open during the year as we continue to grow and improve our performance on the track – that’s one of our goals this year as a start-up team. This is all new for us, so we’re acquiring trucks and we’re putting motor packages together, and we’ve got a Crew Chief now. So this is something that is like a startup company – you have your growing stages, you have building stages, so that’s kind of where we’re at right now.
We’re trying to grow things and build things. That’s one thing that good partnerships do, through sponsorship, is allow you to build up a team so that you can have all these pieces to put together and you can deliver for your sponsors.
BTF: Last year you made your Xfinity Series debut driving for Mike Harmon. Are there more Xfinity starts lined up for you in 2016?
JA: There isn’t anything Xfinity-related lined up yet but it’s definitely something that we’re looking at. We’ve actually discussed, you know, we mentioned last week at the unveiling where we had Chip Wile (Darlington Raceway president) and we announced our sponsorship with Darlington with them being the only NASCAR track in South Carolina.
You know, being from South Carolina I have a lot of pride for our state. That’s why it was so cool to have Chip there because the very first NASCAR race I ever saw was at Darlington. So I thought about how cool it would be to have a presence at Darlington possibly later this year.
But it’s something that’s in the works either this year or next year. It’s definitely something we’re looking at but it’s got to make sense from a competition standpoint of being able to acquire a car and acquire the resources and to do it right. So that’s definitely on the horizon, but we’re going to make sure we get the truck program up and running first.
BTF: What moment from your 2015 NASCAR Camping World Truck Series efforts stands out in a positive light?
JA: It was cool to look back and see what we were able to accomplish and put together, you know, looking back on the season as a whole it was definitely humbling just to be able to have the experience and be a part of the series. It was something I’ve dreamed about for years, you know? Wanting to be on the NASCAR circuit and being able to go races at places like Daytona and Charlotte.
I grew up racing Legend cars at Charlotte Motor Speedway on the quarter mile, and you know, as a kid being 12, 13, 14, or 15, you’re racing on this quarter mile but you see this Cup track that’s a mile-and-a-half that’s wrapped around you, you just always have that goal of wanting to race around that track one day.
That was pretty neat when I finally got to race at Charlotte. It was kind of one of those surreal moments that it finally sunk in and it’s like, “Alright, I got the opportunity at this level to be a part of this series.” And from a driver’s standpoint you desire and work to be the best driver that you possibly can. It gave me a lot of confidence because at Charlotte we weren’t locked in and we really didn’t have the speed we needed to in qualifying and we were like, 36th-fastest in practice and to be locked in the field you need to be 27th.
I went out for qualifying and held it wide open and definitely a big pucker factor of hanging on with that truck, but we made the show and qualified 27th and got the last transfer spot in. That was pretty special, and at the same time the cross-country travel of going to Canada and driving to Phoenix and driving to Las Vegas. Packing in a dually pickup with with me and my Crew Chief and one other guy. Going 42, 44 hours cross-country to go to a racetrack.
It was kind of cool to relive some of the old school moments that NASCAR was built on because you had guys such as Marvin Panch, who passed away early this year, who was a great friend of mine. I met him four or five years ago and I used to always love to listen to his stories. He was a West Coast guy originally, you know, one of the first stories he told me was when he raced out here in NASCAR he hopped in his race car, got it off the showroom floor, and drove it to Florida, worked on it there, then drove to the race track.
I wasn’t to that extreme, but it was still pretty cool. I had a dually, a 40-foot trailer, and we were going NASCAR racing. It was cool to have that opportunity of a little bit of a throwback to the sport and at the same time I hope it encourages other drivers that are out there that are getting into the sport as a 12 or 13-year-old. I was once there. I was once a race fan. I was once a 12-year-old kid racing Bandoleros with aspirations of being a NASCAR driver one day. You always have that question in the back of your mind, “How do I get there? How do I move up to the next level?”
I hope our story of what we’re doing encourages other drivers and other kids that are moving up and hopefully I can be a role model to them this year and show them that through a lot of faith and perseverance that they can make things happen.
BTF: On of the things that really draws fans to you is the fact that you’re a friendly face and you frequently interact with fans online, with everything from Twitter to Reddit.
JA: The Reddit stuff, I love that, I love the community there because, I’ve said it a couple of times on Reddit before , I started out as a race fan. I didn’t initially become a race car driver, I was a race fan. I used to go to Darlington when I was six and seven and sit in the grandstands and pull for Jeff Gordon and Terry Labonte and all those guys I followed growing up.
As a race car driver, everything I do that’s on social media or interacting with fans, the first thing that goes through my mind, you know, somebody from the other side of the table. I think back to when I was seven-years-old and being at the racetrack I would think about how cool it was to be there and be in the garage area and seeing the drivers walk by.
I know the schedule gets crazy at the race track, but I remember the drivers would stop and sign autographs and to have that 10 seconds of interaction made my year. I can still think back to when I got to meet drivers and hang out with them. I got to go to a lot of the hospitality tents and got to go to the BellSouth tent when Kenny Irwin Jr. was driving for Felix Sabates in the No. 42 car. I remember how cool I thought it was that I got to hang around Kenny Irwin even if it was for a couple of minutes.
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So a lot of that kind of transcends to why I act the way I do today and I’ve got Snapchat open and I try to remain active on Twitter and the Reddit stuff, I like it because it’s different. It’s not people that necessarily follow me, rather, it’s a format for me to reach out to people who are just fans of NASCAR and people who like the sport. They may not necessarily be Jordan Anderson fans, but it’s still a chance for me to interact and tell my story and kind of have a new opportunity to meet new people there.
I love the interaction that social media provides and how it gives people an opportunity to have a glimpse into my life and know what I do and I just think it’s cool. I wish I could share more and I think I’ll be able to do more this year. That’s one thing I look forward to, and it’s being able to share more behind-the-scenes stuff with people this year, with me being able to have more time to do that instead of working on the car until three or four in the morning.
Big thanks to Jordan Anderson (@j66anderson) and Jeff Bolen of Bolen Motorsports (@BolenMotorsport).