Black History Month: Davis sees Cup future (cont'd)

His mother agreed that they needed to find something safer. Marc subsequently thought he found the perfect outlet when he was thumbing through a racing magazine and saw an article about Quarter Midgets.

"I ended up running Quarter Midgets, just having fun," Davis said. "That led to Bandeleros, which led to Legend cars and Late Models. Every year I kept getting into bigger things, going faster and I kept winning. So I got hooked."

Gibbs is in his second stint as head coach of the Redskins in Washington, but still stays involved in the race operation now essentially run by his son, J.D., in North Carolina. He said it was J.D. Gibbs who got Marc Davis back on the coach's racing radar when they visited a short track together.

"J.D. had seen him several times," Joe Gibbs said. "He's like, 'Watch this kid. He's got real talent.' And of course we had the minority program going, and he was a perfect fit for that."

Tish Sheets, NASCAR's director of diversity, once said of Davis in an interview with the Indianapolis Star newspaper: "He is like a young Jeff Gordon."

Except, of course, he is black. Sheets went on to caution that there is a danger in having Davis attempt to shoulder the entire load for those who desperately want to bring more diversity into a sport that has for decades been sorely lacking in that department, adding that "several faces" are needed to help NASCAR turn the corner to a brighter and more diverse future.

When he was just 14, Davis also spent a year in Roush Racing's Drive for Diversity program. But when Davis is behind the wheel driving, he's not thinking of making history in the spirit of racial diversity.

He's thinking about winning.

"It's in the back of my mind," Davis admitted of the possibility of making a mark as the first black driver to experience extended success at NASCAR's highest levels. "But as I've grown up, I've grown up with all these guys like Joey [Logano] and Matt Martin [Cup driver Mark's son]. All these kids, that's who I've raced with for 10 years and that's all I've known. So I really haven't thought about it much. ...

"It would be nice for a minority driver to really break through in the Cup Series, but I really think that in time it will happen. That would be a really great breakthrough for NASCAR from the standpoint of expanding the fan base and marketing; but for myself personally, I just look at it as something that will happen eventually. It's not something that I think about 24/7."

Although making it to the Cup Series within five years might sound a bit overly ambitious, or at least maybe not realistic, Davis said that he truly believes it not only can be done but will be done.

"I like to think that way," he said. "With the seasons we've had and the support we have here at JGR, they're really helping us and pushing us forward. So I think if we can keep up what we've been doing the last few years, it's a pretty realistic goal."