Jodi Geschickter: NASCAR Cup Series' only female owner runs a smooth operation

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — As co-owner and vice president in charge of everything, there was no way Jodi Geschickter was going to miss this.

But her husband, Tad, fellow co-owner of the JTG Daugherty team in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, gave it a try earlier this season at Texas Motor Speedway.

On his way to the credential building and proceeding not as fast as he would have liked, the former NASCAR brand manager for Proctor & Gamble attempted to pass the dawdling truck, struck a curb and flipped. He tore his pants and bloodied his leg a little bit, but was on his way. His wife wasn’t at the race yet, so he had time. Not much.

"He doesn’t tell me until 11 o’clock the night before I’m coming in because he doesn’t want me to know and he’s sworn everyone else to secrecy," Jodi Geschickter recounts.

"I’m just thinking of her," interjects her husband.

"So I get to the track and everyone says, 'Have you seen Tad yet?' " she said. "I say, 'Yeah, I know.' And they say, 'Good, we’ve all been told not to talk about it.' "

"You’d think that would make her appreciate me more; she almost lost me," Tad offers again.

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It was another day in the life of one of the more unique Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series owners. As the only female owner in the series, the former flight attendant is an exception.

In assuming a myriad of roles that typical owners delegate, Jodi Geschickter is utterly singular in helping facilitate the daily operation of a race team devised in a Little League field, birthed in a dirt-floor chicken house and 23 years later fielding two full-time Cup teams.

She could find herself exceptionally busy if driver A.J. Allmendinger this weekend replicates his 2014 feat of winning the Cup race at Watkins Glen International and earning himself a spot in the playoffs. The I Love New York 355 at The Glen is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET (NBC Sports Network).

For now, Geschickter focuses on the details she thinks she can control. And that’s pretty much all of them, but in a good way, Allmendinger said.

“She’s a very loving and caring person,” he said. “She’s one of those people where if you really need something, she’s there.”

That approach has helped JTG — small by Cup standards with 89 full-time employees — maintain a sizeable roster of sponsors that has Geschickter hoping the team could expand to a third car.

Allmendinger has had the likes of Roger Penske, Richard Petty and Gerald Forsythe as owners but nothing like Geschickter. She handles staffing, health insurance, benefits, security, facilities, credentials, sponsors, truck driver coordination and marketing. She ferries sponsors to the credential building to sign in guests, picking up the occasional stranger who thinks shuttling fans is her normal job.

“I like to hear what they say,” she admitted.

During one particularly interesting stretch earlier this season, Geschickter personally dealt with a crew chief wrecking a company car, jackman Zack Young being struck by his driver, Chris Buescher, on pit road, a truck driver burning his foot, another crewman being hit in the nose with an air hose, chipping a tooth and requiring stitches, and her husband taking a tumble.

She’s also been known to capture stray animals on road trips, stashing them on driver planes to evacuate them to no-kill shelter states. Crewman try to keep her gaze away from the roadside on rides to the airport.

“Generally, if there’s a problem, people come to me,” she said. “At Bristol, someone had a family member in a car accident three minutes before the start of the race, and he came to me. He said he went to the truck driver and asked who should he see and he said, ‘Go find Jodi’. That made me feel good because it felt like I could react appropriately and get him home to his family and fill his job.”

A previous career as a flight attendant has helped, she said.

“There’s a lot of it, anticipating needs and trying to work within what you have,” she said. “Once you’re at the race track, you have what you have. Same as on an airplane. Once the doors close, you have what you have and you have a multitude of different personality types and how they interact, especially under stressful situations.”

For a woman who darts from her home each non-race morning for a 35-minute commute, two coffees and a water in hand, ready to tackle whatever awaits at the shop, its not surprising that her most cathartic moment at the track comes in moments of controlled chaos. She loves the final frantic, so-called “Happy Hour” practice each weekend.

“I love watching the guys do that job and run around with their radios, I love that pace,” she said.

Geschickter understands her personality type. It’s amplified. It’s detail-oriented. That doesn’t mean she’s unwilling to relinquish a job if needed. She just needs to know that whoever had taken over has her same level of commitment.

“Usually I am a micromanager, a control freak. ... I am," she said sheepishly. "But after a certain point working together, I relinquish control. ... But I do circle back and double check. I start out super-controlling and then I taper off a tick. ... Maybe."

Her team would probably miss it if she tapered off too much.

Follow Brant James on Twitter @brantjames.