With 26 laps to go in Friday night’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 300 at Texas Motor Speedway, 18-year-old Erik Jones, competing in just his ninth NASCAR XFINITY Series race, had Sprint Cup Series stars Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr. bearing down on him from the high side on the final restart.
He never panicked.
Instead he stayed true to the moniker used by one of his No. 20 Toyota’s sponsors – Mortal Kombat X.
Jones “finished them.” The Joe Gibbs Racing driver cleared Keselowski and Earnhardt on Turn 2 with 25 laps to go and held them off the rest of the way for his first XFINITY Series victory.
“This is just amazing,” Jones said after the race. “We beat Cup guys tonight! Just a really cool day and something I’m really proud of not only for myself but everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing. It’s a great feeling knowing you had to work for it, that it was not just handed to you.”
Jones, who also has four victories in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, broke Chase Elliott’s record for most national series wins before the age of 19. He will compete for his second XFINITY Series victory in a field that includes defending series champion Elliott, as well as Sprint Cup Series regulars Kevin Harvick and Joey Logano in Saturday’s Drive to Stop Diabetes 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway (1:30 p.m. ET on FOX Sports 1).
Jones started sixth and finished eighth in his lone start at Bristol last fall.
“Bristol is a track that I definitely consider more in my forte of tracks I grew up running,” he said. “It’s always exciting to get back there and it’s kind of our first short-track race of the year too. It’s going to be interesting to see where our program stands on that side of things, which is always nice to check out. I’m looking forward to it.”
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