ERIK JONES, No. 20 GameStop Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
Heat 1 Finishing Position: 1st
How do you feel about the performance of the car in the heat race?
“We did everything we needed to right there. It was good and it was actually a little bit better than I thought it would be. When we kind of got moved up to the top, I was pretty happy with it overall. Just need a little bit of forward drive, but we rolled the center, which is what kept us out front. We’ll make a few adjustments on it for the race, but overall really happy with the GameStop Camry and nice to be able to start where we qualified up front and hopefully we can keep it up front for 200 more laps.”
Do you feel good about being able to beat Kyle Busch in the heat race?
“We did it in a 50 lap dash and now we only have 200 more that we have to stay in front of him. We’ll see how that goes, but really happy with the GameStop Camry so far. Surprised a little bit with how good we were in the center there. I’m going to see what we’ve got for the race, but we should be pretty good. We’re going to make a few adjustments on it here and get it a little bit closer.”
What will you work on during the break to make the car better?
“Forward drive there for me. I felt like we could maintain if not gain there through the center, but just couldn’t get the power down totally like I wanted to. It’s nice to be able to keep that front row starting spot and hopefully once we get rolling here in the feature we can stay out front for 200 more laps, that would be nice. We’ll see how it all goes.”
What do you think of this heat race format?
“It’s definitely a unique perspective of something we’ve really never done before in a NASCAR top-three series. It’s neat and I think it’s fun to be able to run kind of a dash there and then get to work on your car there a little bit. That can go both ways, everyone else can get better and we could make our stuff worse or we could make our stuff better and be even better than we were. Hopefully we go down that path and we get our car better and we’re able to stay out front here for the next 200.”
