The Pro Late Models points leader at Five Flags Speedway in Florida is familiar. Local Pensacola kid, that Johanna Long. Ran NASCAR for a couple of years. At 22, she wasn't supposed to be back yet, not after using a win in the prestigious Snowball Derby in 2010 to propel herself to a job in the Nationwide Series.

But Long is there, reinvigorating her affection for grassroots racing while working diligently to put herself back in stock car racing's big leagues. And in arguably the most crucial month of the racing business calendar, when driver lineups and sponsor commitments are sealed for the ensuing year, Long's predicament for 2015 is already precarious: no sponsorship commitments, no NASCAR commitments and the serious prospect of another year away from the series.

"It's been very depressing, I guess," Long said in a phone interview. "I don't know if that's the right word, but it's been very hard on me. I don't think it gets any easier because it's something I've worked for my whole entire life, just to be in NASCAR. I got to do it for four years, and it was the best four years of my life.

"Being in a car was what I looked forward to every week, and when it gets taken away from you, it's not always the best thing."

Long made 24 combined truck series starts for her family team in 2010 and 2011, and her apparent NASCAR break came in 2012 when she joined ML Motorsports, based in Warsaw, Indiana. Long ran 41 of 66 Nationwide races for MLM during two seasons -- finishing 12th at Daytona in 2012 and the same at Iowa in 2013 -- but the team folded abruptly before the start of this season, leaving Long no time to acquire a NASCAR seat.

She had earned the respect of her peers during her short stint and is regarded as talented by several teams, although none has backed that regard with a job offer. Affable and popular, Long dealt diplomatically with an unwitting conscription as the mascot for an anti-Danica Patrick fan faction when the polarizing former open-wheel driver transitioned to NASCAR. But for Long, popularity has not translated into the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to finance even a threadbare Nationwide bid.