A North Carolina jury ordered NASCAR driver Jennifer Jo Cobb to pay $850,000 for an affair with a married spotter after a private investigator testified he overheard their “rambunctious” hotel encounter, a judgment that held her liable for wrecking a 17-year marriage.
Private detective Jim Rorie told a North Carolina court he tracked Clayton Odie Hughes to a Comfort Inn in Martinsville, Virginia, in October 2020, booked the room next door, and listened through the wall as the pair had sex. That testimony helped Tracey Hughes win a civil judgment against Cobb under the state’s alienation-of-affection and criminal-conversation laws.
The New York Post reported that Cobb, then 53 and a longtime NASCAR competitor originally from Kansas City, was found liable and ordered to pay the full $850,000. Hughes had sought more than $50,000; the jury went far higher.
Cobb was married at the time, though separated from fellow driver Eddie Troconis. Hughes worked as her spotter. Tracey Hughes, then 63, hired the investigator after growing suspicious her husband of many years was cheating while still living at home.
Rorie put a tracking device on Hughes’s Toyota Camry, followed him to the motel, and watched through the peephole as Cobb arrived about an hour later. He pulled a dresser back from the shared wall, put his ear to it, and listened.
In court he described what he heard without hesitation.
Rorie testified:
“There was no doubt about what I was hearing.”
He told the jury he caught “the squeaking of the bed, quite a bit of that, female tones moaning, and occasionally a male’s voice.” As the encounter grew louder, he said, he distinctly heard the man moaning and saying “Oh f, k” and “Oh my God,” and believed he heard the woman yell, “Don’t stop.”
Fox News reported the same account of Rorie’s “rambunctious” description of the session next door. North Carolina is one of the few states that still lets a spouse sue a third party for intentionally breaking up a marriage through adultery.
Tracey Hughes sued Cobb for alienation of affection and criminal conversation, the so-called homewrecker claims. The jury found Cobb “willfully, intentionally, and deliberately seduced, enticed, and alienated the affections” of Clayton Hughes.
Breitbart noted the breakdown: $50,000 for alienation of affection and $800,000 for criminal conversation. Tracey said the affair caused her to suffer “the loss of support, injury to [her] feelings and reputation, and had her marital relationship destroyed.” The marriage had lasted 17 years and produced two sons.
An earlier New York Post account stated Cobb allegedly set up regular trysts through calls and texts while traveling to races. Cobb argued the couple had already separated in September 2020, about a month after Clayton first spoke to Tracey about divorce. The court found the separation was not formalized until January 2021, so liability stuck.
Career reversals and public fallout rarely stay tidy, a pattern familiar from high-stakes political defections and sudden side-switching that leave old alliances in ruins.
When Troconis learned of the relationship, he assaulted Clayton Hughes at an Alabama racing event in 2021. He was convicted of assault the following year. Tracey and Clayton divorced in 2022. Cobb retired from NASCAR in 2024 after a decades-long career that included running her own team. She and Clayton have remained together.
Cobb’s attorney was not immediately identified in the coverage. No criminal charge was described for the affair itself, only the civil judgment under North Carolina law and the separate assault case against Troconis.
Marriage still carries legal weight in the few states that refuse to treat adultery as a private free-for-all. When a jury hears the bedsprings and the open-door texts, the bill can arrive with six figures attached.