Jordan Anderson transformed his childhood love for racing and competition into a thriving career as a driver and owner of a motorsports team.
Anderson is a South Carolina native who grew up in Forest Acres and now is an owner of the NASCAR Xfinity Series team Jordan Anderson Racing. His team runs the No. 27 car driven by Jeb Burton and the No. 31 car driven by Parker Retzlaff full-time, and Anderson drives the No. 32 car part-time.
Anderson got into racing at a young age, when he was invited to race with one of his friends at a go-kart track in Pontiac, South Carolina.
“One day [my friend] invited me to come drive one of his go-karts, and I drove a few laps and fell in love [with racing],” Anderson said.
“I just fell in love with it at an early age and was fortunate enough to say, hey, this is what I wanted to do at a young age and did go-karts and ran smaller cars and legend cars,” Anderson said.
Anderson got partners involved from the local community, with the City of Forest Acres as one of his earliest sponsors. He made his NASCAR debut in the Truck Series in 2014 and ran for teams in 2015, 2016, and 2017. However, these partnerships never lasted.
“I would go drive for a team for a year, and the team would grow, and we would get it to grow and it kind of got to where we were successful with it,” Anderson said. “And, you know, it kind of got to the point where in the season, another driver would come in with more sponsorship and I would lose my ride.”
Starting from ground zero every year was challenging.
“After that happened a couple different years in a row, I’m like, how can I keep this from happening?” Anderson said.
Anderson’s involvement in running his team stems from his early days in NASCAR because he knows sponsorships and marketing drive racing.
According to Anderson, “It’s a very expensive sport, and it takes a lot of money to really make these cars go around. From an early age, it’s hard, you know, not coming from a family that could cut a check.”
In 2018, Anderson decided he wanted to take a chance. He proposed starting a team to his now business partner, John Bommartio.
“We were going truck racing. We had two trucks lined up that we could buy. This thing’s going to be very grassroots, very boots on the ground. It was me and three friends that were going to race. We had a small truck and trailer that we drove everywhere across the country that year,” Anderson said.
Anderson saw this as a chance to help control his destiny in a sports world plagued with the question of who has the most money.
“Kind of control my own path, and build for the future. Not have to start over every year,” Anderson said.
His ownership in the Truck Series continued from 2018 to 2021; during that time, the team ran in both the Truck and Xfinity series. It was challenging to get a good start, so Anderson started putting other drivers in his Xfinity car.
“We put Tyler Reddick in the car and Erik Jones – we put a bunch of different drivers in the car, kind of stumbled on a business model and said, ‘hey, we can keep the race team growing and continue to put drivers in the car.’ They were bringing sponsors to the table and helping us with this whole program,” Anderson said.
This system allowed the team to get a foothold. After going full-time with Myatt Snyder in 2022, the team settled on their current model. Jeb Burton and Parker Retzlaff ran full-time and Anderson and Austin Green occasionally ran races in a part-time car.
“It’s been exciting to watch this thing grow, and to have so many people from South Carolina support me. The saying of, you know, follow your dreams is so cliche. A lot of people say it, but it definitely does ring true in my case,” Anderson said.
Anderson’s success serves as an example to other up-and-coming drivers.
“I knew what I wanted to do,” Anderson said. “Failure was not an option. Just continue to dig in.”
According to Anderson, he does a little bit of everything, and while the schedule and hours are long, it is all worth it.
“I still love it. You know, the whole reason I started the team was for me to have an opportunity to race,” Anderson said. “I still get to race every now and then. It makes for long hours. But it’s so much more worth it, because this is not a 9 to 5 by any means. We travel 33 weekends out of the year. We start Daytona in February, we end in November in Phoenix,” Anderson said. “But I live, eat and breathe it.”
Looking towards the future, Anderson is excited for what it could bring – reinvesting in the team and continuing to build a solid foundation in the Xfinity Series, competing for more wins and keeping the momentum going forward.
“Doing this is pretty amazing and pretty exciting for us. We are the challenger team that’s trying to do things a little bit differently, and we see it start to pay off,” Anderson said.
NASCAR signed a TV deal worth $7.7 billion dollars starting in 2025. Anderson hopes S.C. drivers and teams can take advantage of the financial boost in the racing world.
“Our sport went through a period where it was a little bit of a lull. It’s just so exciting to see more people getting back involved in our sport,” Anderson said.
With the CW Channel picking up the Xfinity Series for the full season next year, there are exciting new opportunities due to the increased revenue and exposure brought about by basic cable.
“So hopefully more people will be watching the Xfinity series. Hopefully we’ll put S.C. back in victory lane soon and keep this thing singing on.”
Editor’s note: Jordan Anderson and the team gave pit passes to the writer. This did not influence the story content or perspective.
