AVONDALE, Ariz. – Corey LaJoie has been beaten down.

By the sport, an unforgiving one. By losing sponsors, which tends to end careers. By working with people he, admittedly, didn’t get along with. By wondering if the fire suit should remain hung up and if his true calling was atop the pit box.

And yet, he’s still here.

You’re familiar with LaJoie, right? The 28-year-old who finished 29th in Cup Series standings last year in his first full-time season for Go Fas Racing at NASCAR’s highest level? Sure, he notched a pair of top 10s behind the wheel of the No. 32 Ford Mustang, but each of those results came at a superspeedway race. You might think you’ve got the whole picture by now.

This is a sport that rewards one winner, sending 39 drivers home pissed off on a weekly basis. What else is there to know about a driver who, realistically, knows he likely has little shot at a checkered flag right when the green one drops?

Everything.

“I think that people who strictly watch the broadcast on every Sunday don’t know (much about me or my abilities). The cars look the same, we run in the same race, and we run in the back. It’s easy for people to assume that you’re just a mediocre driver or less-than-capable driver just because of the position you run in,” LaJoie told NASCAR.com Friday afternoon at Phoenix Raceway, site of Sunday’s FanShield 500 (3:30 p.m. ET, FOX, MRN, Sirius XM NASCAR Radio). “And there’s also a fine line that I balance personally between shameless promotion and telling the facts, because I’m not one for shameless self-promotion. I would love to be able to go out there and let my driving and results do the talking, but in the Cup Series, your handicap is so much about what you’re driving that the opportunity to show what you’re capable of only presents itself three, maybe four times a year.”

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It’s easy for some to brush off the superspeedway finishes – as those races historically bring parity among the field much, much closer – but those are exactly the opportunities he needs to nail in order to showcase what he’s actually made of. Strong finishes in the Coca-Cola 600 (12th), at Martinsville in the fall (18th, lead-lap finish) and two weekends ago at Las Vegas (16th) go a long way, too.

Knowing that those three to four chances to get his name on the top half of the TV ticker are relatively few – and so much happens and so much goes into the weeks, sometimes months that separate them – LaJoie has taken it upon himself to get his and other smaller teams’ stories out there through other various outlets, namely his MRN podcast, “Sunday Money,” and MotorTrend’s “NASCAR ALL IN: Battle For Daytona” series, highlighting his run-up to the “Great American Race” along with Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Dillon and Tyler Reddick.

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If it feels like you’re hearing more about LaJoie these days – more so than we typically hear about the driver of a car with back-half-of-the-field equipment – it’s intentional on his part, sure, but it’s more because people are coming to understand that there’s talent and personality throughout the field. And they’re connecting with his regular-guy, no-frills-added authenticity.

“I’ve probably gained 10,000 new followers on Instagram, 12,000 on Twitter and I have people tweeting me all the time like, ‘Hey man, you’re great on the show’ and, like, that’s just my real life,” he said. “I’m not putting on a façade or faking it or putting something on for the camera. Like, they literally just followed me around for six weeks and they got stuff and shot it.”

This kind of demeanor and perspective doesn’t happen by accident, however. The “stacking pennies” mantra that LaJoie has coined – pun only half intended – doesn’t develop overnight.

It comes from getting knocked down 99 times, getting up 100.

“Just getting beat down enough and figuring out how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” LaJoie says. “This sport has an amazing way of humbling you, even for the guys on the other side of the garage winning races. For every win, you’re going to have three or four bad weeks and you’re going to have to figure out how to rebound. Whether that be your self-confidence, or your team around you, just morale overall. Going through all the trials and all the hard times and lack of driving opportunities or lack of good driving opportunities that have come about, you kind of figure out what moves the needle when it comes to relating to people and sponsors or the fans.

“That was kind of the letter I wrote to Rick (Hendrick, pitching himself for the No. 48 Chevrolet for next year), it’s like, man, I don’t have the statistics on Racing Reference because I haven’t been in any car that’s capable of putting up any good statistics … but, a lot of this (expletive) you don’t learn unless you have to do it the hard way. That’s what I’ve had to do. Every. Single. Thing. I’ve had to deal with losing the sponsors. Working with people that (I) probably didn’t always get along with. Relating to the fans. Just doing the humbling of yourself and putting your pride on the back burner just for the sake of being able to do what you love.”

Who can’t relate to and appreciate that?

None of this has been easy for Corey LaJoie. There likely have been days when he wished it was, wondering why he didn’t have the fortune of a driver stepping into a top-tier ride immediately because the funding was there. There likely have been times when everything on paper was telling him it made the most sense to walk away, with just one quiet voice in the back of his head gnawing at him to press on.

And still, he’s the driver using what he’s been given to do things that matter. Just last year, he waived a full month’s salary to put Samaritan’s Feet, a charitable cause he believes in, on his No. 32 Ford. He’s currently putting together a kickball tournament to take place during the Charlotte race weeks featuring some of NASCAR and the NFL’s biggest stars for the charity as well.

When his time comes to truly show what he’s capable of – and all recent indications point to that potentially being the case over the next few years, if not 2021 – he won’t want to have changed anything, as everything was as it was supposed to be.

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“I’ll be honest, man. My faith has a big part of (coming to this perspective.) My self-worth growing up probably was wrapped up in how I did during any particular race because I thought that Rick Hendrick was watching me. I thought how I did that particular Saturday night race at Hickory (Speedway) was going to make or break my career and that’s what I got my self-worth from. I’ve been in church my whole life but the more I started digging in and knowing what it says and knowing what God’s heart is, I don’t get my self-worth out of how I finish on Sundays. Granted, I care about it and I want to win every single race I’m in, but even when I don’t, it doesn’t change what my value is. That doesn’t make the guy who’s in Victory Lane more or less valuable than the next guy.

“ … I’ve read all of Tim Tebow’s books and he gave me a great perspective of using football, or baseball or racing in my case as a platform to spread positive vibes or whatever you’re into, love. Don’t abuse the platform and the blessings and the money and the toys and the stuff that’s easy to take for granted. Just use it and eventually, if it’s meant to be, I will be in a car that’s capable of winning races.

“And if it’s not meant to be, I’m having a hell of a ride right now.”