Ernie Irvan‘s son, Jared, raced in the PASS South super late-model series this year driving Ernie’s #28 that carried him to eight of his 15 victories. Irvan drove Marc Reno’s unheralded #56 Dale Earnhardt Chevy to a 29th-place finish in his Cup debut on Sept. 13, 1987 at Richmond. Reno, for his part, can’t seem to get enough of helping a young racer named Irvan. He spotted for Jared during the 2014 season. Things aren’t so easy for the junior Irvan. His on-track talent can’t be denied – he finished in the top 10 in 10 of his 14 PASS races – but his father believes it takes more than skill and word-of-mouth to get a driver up the ladder. ‘It’s all about money,’ Irvan said. ‘It’s just the way it is. To get a race team to see that you’ve got a lot of talent and to be able to say, ‘I’m going to run this guy and he’s going to a great job,’ you almost have to have somebody else involved. It makes it tough. Take Kyle Larson. Obviously, (car owner) Chip (Ganassi) saw him and saw the talent, but I don’t think there’s a lot of people out looking for talent because talent ends up showing up at your door. People just say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this guy and I’ve got this sponsor, would you consider running him?” Jared Irvan doesn’t have the benefit of a major sponsor to move forward. He doesn’t have a famous driver’s dealership on his car, either. In order for Irvan’s son to be one of the 10 percent he believes can get an opportunity, he’ll need some outside help. ‘We don’t have anything very secure yet,’ Irvan said. ‘We ran the super late model and we’re hoping to do some K&N (Pro Series East) stuff next year.’(National Speed Sport News)
