By Alex Nieten
CONCORD, NC (November 20, 2025) – A loud crash outside the Buch Motorsports trailer interrupted a special night for Cody Jacobs.
He’d just pulled off the improbable. Paul McMahan was searching for a stable ride and jumped in Tom Buch’s No. 13 for a few races in the northeast. His only crew member? Jacobs. Neither owned a CDL, so they had to find driving help to get the car to the track.
McMahan and Jacobs unloaded at New York’s Rolling Wheels Raceway Park on May 16, 2012 with speed. They wound up with the pole for the Feature, and McMahan led every lap to bring Jacobs his first World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series win as a crew chief. They were so shorthanded they didn’t even have a quad and asked another team for a push to Victory Lane.
A long celebration in the pit area followed. Eventually, they decided to load up and head out, but Jacobs forgot to check one box in the process.
“We got drunk in the pits, and I forgot to strap the toolbox down,” Jacobs recalled with a laugh. “The toolbox, we kind of just rolled in the trailer, and it had these two hooks, and we’d run a ratchet strap around the toolbox and strap it to the wall. Well, I screwed up and forgot to strap that thing down. We got going down the road, and that thing wiggled free and hit the door latch on the side door and fell out the side door of the trailer and slid down the freeway. But we didn’t lose a single tool and Buch wasn’t pissed off. It was kind of a funny backstory to that whole night. Me and Paulie still laugh to this day over that.”
That was an early piece of what’s becoming a Hall of Fame career on the wrenches for Jacobs. In the years that followed, the Ohio native worked for his cousin Lee Jacobs, called the shots on the Pete Grove-owned No. 70, and developed a fruitful partnership with the Demyan-Rudzik No. 49X team with Tim Shaffer behind the wheel.
Jacobs and Shaffer parted ways with the team after the 2019 Knoxville Nationals, leaving Jacobs with an uncertain future in the sport. He headed home and found jobs to pay the bills. Then came a life-changing call from Big Game Motorsports owner, Tod Quiring.
“I went home and was just kind of jumping around,” Jacobs said. “I actually bought a Ford Expedition for $1,500 off one of my dad’s buddies, and I was hauling Amish, just trying to make some money. When Tod called me, I believe it was right at the beginning of December in 2019. I didn’t know what I was going to do and Tod called, and I flew out to meet with those guys at the Big Game headquarters there in Windom (Minnesota). I went and saw the shop, and I just remember that overwhelming feeling of it being my first big team opportunity and all of the stuff they had and different cars. It was just a real overwhelming feeling.”
Fast forward six years, and Jacobs has cemented himself as one of the top crew chiefs in the sport.
Kerry Madsen drove for Big Game during Jacobs’ first year with the team in 2020. Limited time to prepare in the off-season made the transition difficult, but the pairing still managed to win the 360 Nationals at Knoxville.
Quiring hired David Gravel to pilot the No. 2 in 2021, and that was the start of something special. Jacobs and Gravel clicked immediately, racking up 11 wins and finished runner-up in World of Outlaws points. They collected 19 more checkered flags over the next two seasons, resulting in another pair of second-place finishes in the standings. In 2024, Gravel and Jacobs made the final step to the mountaintop by securing a championship with The Greatest Show on Dirt.
“He’s in it for the right reasons,” Gravel said of his crew chief. “He’s not doing it for the money. He loves the sport, and he’s accomplishing a lot here. It’s really cool when you commit to a team and a driver, an owner, and a crew chief stick together and believe in each other, really cool things can happen.”
They weren’t done there as they assembled an even stronger 2025 that boasted 17 victories, 40 podiums, and a 4.13 average finish on the way to back-to-back titles. The run with Gravel is moving Jacobs into elite company. He’s with legendary names like Karl Kinser, Ricky Warner, Scott Gerkin, Eric Prutzman, and Kenny Woodruff as a multi-time World of Outlaws champion crew chief. He’s come a long way in a short time from that Ford Expedition in late-2019.
“It’s very gratifying. It’s very humbling,” Jacobs said. “I’ve always felt like I wanted to make a career out of this and do this for a living. So, to be able to have my name recognized in the same category as Ricky and Karl and some of the greats and legends of this sport. It’s very humbling and like I said very gratifying. I’m just going to try to continue to work hard and do the best I can. The history books will tell the tale when it’s all said and done of what you’ve accomplished and learned over the years.”
Jacobs, Gravel, and the entire Big Game Motorsports team have no intentions of slowing down. Like all the greats, success only fuels the hunger for more. They’re atop the sport, and the target is on their back. Complacency can lead to getting caught, but complacency isn’t what led Jacobs to the top. A love for the sport and willingness to do whatever it takes brought him here, a mindset that isn’t going anywhere. He’ll continue searching for more speed. Keep the boxes checked. Make sure all the tools in the trailer are secured.
“There’s a lot of good teams and driver-mechanic combos right now,” Jacobs said. “There’s a lot of good guys and good teams out there, so you’ve got to keep working and you’ve got to keep learning. I learned from Charlie Garrett a long time ago. He told me, ‘The day you stop learning is the day you start getting beat.’ You’ve got to keep learning. You’ve got to keep growing and leave no stone unturned. You’ve got to make sure your things are right to be successful out here, so that’s what we’re going to keep doing, keep growing, keep learning and see if we can string together a run here.”
The 2026 World of Outlaws seasons begins on Feb. 4-7 at Volusia Speedway Park’s Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals. For tickets, CLICK HERE.
If you can’t make it to the track, catch every lap live on DIRTVision.