Jerry Coons Jr. has won back-to-back USAC Midget national championships.

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As long as your threesome is Roger McCluskey, Bill Cheesbourg and Carl Trimmer, you will not get much of a debate about the holy trinity of Tucson auto racing.

Oh, sure, 1949 Indy 500 winner Bill Holland completed his life here (he died in 1984), but Holland did not grow up racing Tucson jalopies, a kid from the dirt tracks, the way McCluskey, Cheesbourg and Trimmer did.

McCluskey, Cheesbourg and Trimmer. The Big Three. Among them you have more than a century of racing, 23 Indy 500 starts, and victories in so many small-track, Saturday Night showdowns that you cannot estimate the correct number.

It would take a USAC national championship (or two) for someone, anyone, to knock on the door and expect the Big Three expand to the Big Four.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Jerry.

Jerry who?

J'ever hear of Jerry Coons Jr.?

Over the last few years, while we were not paying much attention, 35-year-old Jerry Coons Jr. left Tucson to race Midget cars in every place known to USAC. This year, for instance, he won featured races in Ohio, Wisconsin, Kansas, Indiana, Phoenix and Australia.

Coons, a Palo Verde High School grad, won USAC's Midget cars national championship for the second straight year, driving, and winning, the way USAC Midget Hall of Famers A.J. Foyt, Parnelli Jones and Gary Bettenhausen did in the grand old days of USAC.

Today and Sunday, in a sweet homecoming, Coons will be the featured driver in the McCluskey Classic at USA Race Park.

"It's an honor to have a guy with Jerry's national credentials at our place,'' said Chris Morgan, general manager of the Los Reales Road facility. "A hometown guy coming off another USAC championship; that's pretty good timing all the way around.''

If you have followed auto racing in Tucson, Jerry Coons Jr. is hardly a new face. He began racing Quarter Midgets in 1978, in a $400 car. He was 5. By the time he was 14, he won his first main event, against adults, in El Paso. He was Rookie of the Year at Tucson Raceway Park while he was still in high school.

Same guy. Front Row Jerry.

The difference is that Coons now drives for the esteemed Hoffman Racing Team, which has been in operation since 1926 and has featured, at times, those such as NASCAR star Kasey Kahne. Instead of "Tucson Tool Distributing'' on the front of his car, Coons now represents Tide and Mopar, and other heavyweight auto racing endorsers.

"There's a lot of pressure,'' he said. "If you don't win, you get fired. But that's why I do what I do. I expect to win, even when I come back home for races like the McCluskey Classic. It's fun, but at the same time, I'm here to win.''

Coons drives the USAC circuit that thrives in the Midwest. He drove in 17 Indiana races this season (and 10 in Wisconsin) and plans to move full time to Indiana in 2008. Although USAC Midget cars don't get a lot of play in Arizona, Coons is a recognizable figure in Indianapolis, where he will be honored Jan. 12 as a member of USAC's 2007 All-American Racing Team.

In the old days, McCluskey and Cheesbourg advanced from their Tucson and Arizona successes to the Indy 500. It was a natural succession, part of the business. Win in the backwater towns and the racing world takes notice.

If you can win in Belleville, Kansas, as Coons has, you can race with anybody.

But NASCAR's overwhelming success with its matinee-idol approach has changed that. Rather than bump up to Indy cars or the NASCAR circuits, Coons is likely to stay in USAC competition for the rest of his career.

"I'm doing what I'm doing, and that's probably the way it's going to stay,'' he said. "Auto racing, especially NASCAR, has become age-driven. There is a driver-development program for kids 15, 16; kids with a pocketful of family money, sometimes requiring $300,000 to $400,000 a year. You've almost got to buy your way to success now. If you haven't gotten there by the time you're 20 or 22, it's probably not going to happen.''

When Coons was a teen-ager, and into his early 20s, he had to gamble, quitting his day job — he was an outside sales rep for auto parts firms, among other things — to race wherever he could, and when he had the time and money to do so.

He wasn't able to fully chase auto racing, full time, until he was 26.

It does not mean he is bitter. He plans to race until he is in his mid-40s, and his calendar is as stuffed in '08 as it was last year; he will race in New Zealand and Australia early in 2008, and jump back on the USAC circuit, which will take him from Phoenix to Florida, Pennsylvania to Nevada, and parts in between. That's 11 months of racing, which now concludes at home with the McCluskey Classic.

"I can't imagine a better way to make a living,'' he said. "I'd like to be in position to make millions and millions as they do in NASCAR, but this is the life I chose and the life I enjoy.''