Our car experts choose every product we feature. We may earn money from the links on this page.

The 28-year-old was driving to races in a dually pickup until last season.

It’s a familiar adage in motorsports: If you can’t win the show, be the show.

Jordan Anderson wishes he was the one doing a burnout on the front stretch instead of race winner Grant Enfinger.

Anderson says he would have climbed the catch fence, run through the grandstands and probably done another burnout for good measure if he had won the drag race to the checkered flag at the NASCAR Truck Series race at Daytona International Speedway on Friday night.

That’s how big of a deal even finishing second at Daytona was for the 28-year-old owner-driver.

Anderson is one of six employees who work on the No. 3 Jordan Anderson Racing Chevrolet, along with crew chief Wally Rogers, truck chief Danny Ketterman, tire technician Kyle Werner, chassis specialist Robbie May and front-end mechanic Jeremy Labretone.

"I know their names because I just booked all their flights to Vegas last week," Anderson said with a hearty laugh. "I could tell you where they live, their last five social digits ... what do you want to know?"

Anderson launched his own team in 2018, driving himself to races in a dually and trailer that contained his equipment, unlike the expensive NASCAR-style haulers commonplace even at the Super Late Model level.

The South Carolinian couldn’t afford one of those until last season, and he continued driving his stuff across the country until he conceded that he shouldn’t be doing so without a commercial driver's license.

Still, this was an improvement in his rags to slightly nicer rags career. He missed the 2017 race at Daytona and once had to start a social media campaign to earn funding to purchase a new engine.

It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so damn inspiring.

That’s also what made a runner-up finish in the 2020 Truck Series season opener a victory for Anderson.

He had just two top-10s in 101 starts but started to show front-running speed in 2019, especially under the direction of Rogers. Now 2020 has brought new challenges in the form of additional contenders such as Front Row Motorsports and McAnally Racing.

Anderson needed reinforcements and found them in the form of Chevrolet and a new sponsor in K-SEAL.

"There have been times where I've just been so frustrated at the business model of the sport and how things have been going at times," Anderson said. "That's why we put in the extra investment into the team this year because we couldn't afford to go to Daytona and miss the race and start the season in a hole.

"That's because I read about all these new teams coming and they have budgets five or six times larger than ours. They were going to bring their best bullets and we needed to match that."

And while Anderson wasn't able to edge ahead of Enfinger, he was celebrating on a chilly night in February because the purse for finishing second at Daytona is going to make a significant difference for his No. 3 team.

"This is so big for our team, financially, because if this truck didn't survive, I didn't know what I was going to do for Talladega," Anderson said. "We have a truck for Talladega, the money is really going to help us, and we just have momentum.

"This is really big to all those guys who work in our shop. We talk about ROI for sponsors; it's hard to give them much more than this."

The burnout didn't take place on the front stretch, but don't be surprised if skid marks are found somewhere on the property once the Truck Series haulers have moved out over the weekend.