Toyota NASCAR Camping World Truck Series (NCWTS)
Erik Jones – Notes & Quotes
Canadian Tire Motorsports Park – August, 29, 2015
ERIK JONES, No. 4 Toyota Tundra, Kyle Busch Motorsports
How does it feel to be road course racing again?
“Well, I think it’s just a matter of being more comfortable this time around on the road course. Last year was my first road course in any sense – not just NASCAR – so I feel really good about it. I felt like our Truck is quite a bit better than it was last year. We had a good Tundra last year. It was just a matter of putting some other things together and getting the whole puzzle completed and I feel like we’ve done that this year, so it will be interesting to see how much different it is tomorrow. Obviously, it’s going to be a lot warmer and quite a bit different race track, so hopefully it stays close and we’ll be able to continue with what we have today.”
Is it difficult to come to a road course during a tight championship battle?
“It throws kind of a curve at you, but we know it’s coming all year and we’ve prepared for it not only last year. But I guess last year was kind of a stepping stone to kind of build for this year knowing that we’d be full-time and we built a road course truck and try to improve on it for this year and make things better and in the sense that we knew we’d be full-time this year. It’s been a learning curve for sure from last year to this year and trying to figure out how to better on a road course and I feel like I’ve done at least my part of getting better as a driver on the road course and the team has done their part as well getting the truck a little better. It’s a really good deal so far and I enjoy the road course racing, so it’s fun when we get to go here this part of the season.”
What is it like racing against Alex Tagliani?
“I’ve only had to do it once and that was last year. I think we all as drivers look forward to it, but at the same time we know we’re going to have beat them every weekend. We kind of go in it with a sense that we know he’s (Alex Tagliani) going to be fast and it’s actually nice to have that benchmark to go off of rather than your other full-time competitors. It’s interesting to see where he’s at and where his times are, so it’s always nice to see where you really are in these road course races and he obviously does set the benchmark each and every time we go to the road courses in NASCAR. It’s always fun to race against him. He’s extremely talented and you always learn something from him when you’re following behind him.”
Would you bump a driver out of the way for a win?
“I guess it’s all dependent on the situation. If we’ve raced each other hard and clean all day then no, but if he roughs me up to get by then that’s fair play I’d say. Like I said, it’s situational. No, if I was behind him for the last 10 laps and it came down to the last corner, no, I probably wouldn’t just drive into him and move him out of the way. I’ve never won a race like that and honestly don’t intend to anytime soon. I’m not really into that. I think honestly if you can’t just set someone up and pass them – if you really have to think about how you’re going to set them up and knock them out of the way – I don’t think that’s really much of a race or anything like that. I’ve always been – it takes me longer to figure out how to knock somebody out of the way than to just setup a pass and pass somebody, so that’s always how I’ve kind of seen it.”
