MENCS: Jones Leaves Phoenix With Best Career Finish

By:
On:
In: NASCAR Cup Series News

Erik Jones, who joined Furniture Row Racing over in the offseason to pilot a second entry for the team based in Denver, Colorado, walked away from Phoenix Raceway with his best career finish in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series on Sunday. Jones, a Byron, Michigan native, scored an eighth-place finish in last Sunday’s Camping World 500.

Jones started eighth when the race got underway in the hot Phoenix sun. He battled with handling during this run and finished stage one sitting in the 11th position. Once stage two got underway, after the team made some adjustments, Jones found himself back into the top 10 just after 120 laps of racing.

When stage two ended, Jones found himself sitting seventh on the leaderboard, earning him four additional driver points. He then sat seventh through 10th in the final stage of the event before hitting pit road on lap 259. The crew pulled off a fast pit stop to get Jones out fifth for the restart.

On lap 308, with four laps remaining, Joey Logano brought out the final caution of the day in turn one following a blown tire. This incident changed everything about the race. That’s when crew chief Chris Gayle had to make an important decision on whether to pit.

Gayle decided to have Jones enter pit road for four tires. Several other teams elected to stay out or come to pit road for only two tires. This would back the No. 77 5-hour Extra Strength Toyota to restart 14th on the leaderboard in NASCAR Overtime.

With the short two lap run, Jones quickly gained six positions to capture his best career finish in the series of eighth. With the finish, he goes into Auto Club Speedway this weekend sitting 18th in driver standings.

“It was a good day,” said Jones after the race. “Your expectations kind of change as the day goes on. When you feel like you have a fifth place car, you want to run fifth, but it just didn’t work out at the end. We had a lot of guys take two (tires). A lot more than I thought would. A lot more obviously than Chris (Gayle, crew chief) thought would. We had a great restart and were able to get back up to eighth.

Jones didn’t exactly start the year off the way they had hoped. In the season opener at Daytona, the rookie driver started 34th and finished 39th due to a crash just past halfway in the ‘Great American Race’. The next two races, at Atlanta and Las Vegas, Jones captured a 14th and a 15th-place finish. This placed him 20th in points going into Phoenix.

“All in all, the entire weekend was good,” said Gayle after the extremely hot day at Phoenix. “The 5-hour ENERGY Toyota Camry qualified in the top-10 and, because of that, we drew a good pit stall. We ran in the top 10 most of the day and Erik had great restarts. He got to learn a lot about how these cars drive at a short track like this under really hot conditions. I thought we had a fifth- to sixth-place car, maybe even a fourth-place car if things had gone just right. Unfortunately, with those late-race cautions you don’t know what’s going to happen strategy-wise and it was kind of chaotic. But Erik did a great job on four tires to rebound to get his first top-10.”

Jones also said after the race that running a test session at Phoenix helped he and the team a lot during the weekend.

“I think it helped a lot. It was able to at least give us a good baseline to start with,” said Jones. “I think every time we start coming back to these tracks for the second time we’re just going to be that much better and that much stronger. It was a big deal. I hope we test somewhere else this year for sure.”

The 20-year old’s previous best finish in the premier series came in 2015 while subbing for suspended driver Matt Kenseth at Texas Motor Speedway. Jones took the No. 20 DeWalt Tools Toyota Camry to a 12th-place finish after starting sixth on the leaderboard.

Brett Winningham
Follow Me
Latest posts by Brett Winningham (see all)
Post Views: 63