Toyota Racing – Brandon Jones
NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)
Charlotte Motor Speedway – May 23, 2019
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Brandon Jones was made available to the media in Charlotte:
BRANDON JONES, No. 19 Menards / Jeld-Wen Toyota Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
What’s it like to have your team owner voted to the Hall of Fame and are you any more motivated to win now?
“It’s pretty cool to be able to drive for a Hall of Famer. I’ve had the chance before in my career as well. Coach (Joe Gibbs) definitely deserves it. I love racing for this team. I love racing with him as well. We need to get a win. We need to knock that off to try to get one for Coach.”
What makes Charlotte Motor Speedway unique?
“Charlotte is funny. I feel like every time we come back here, the heat and the winters break it up some. It’s almost kind of like Iowa (Speedway). You come back and you have a new bump, you have a new seam every single we time come. That changes it up a little bit. They’ve also been adding the PJ1 to the second and third groove so using that to your advantage and learning how to use that some helps. That’s always a challenge when you come here.”
How do you handle the track when there is a new bump or a new seam?
“You have to watch other people and you have to mess up in practice. I think that’s what you use practice for is you have to search around for that stuff. You see one of the best, Kyle Busch, doing that all the time in practice. He’s searching around and looking at that stuff, putting himself in bad situations to learn what he’s got to do for the race.”
Do you figure any of that stuff out in the race as well?
“Yeah, some of that stuff that doesn’t come to you in practice, for sure. You’ve got to figure out what’s hurting you in the race. Sometimes you hit a seam and you’re like oh, I didn’t feel that one in practice. Yeah, for sure. There’s always things that you’re constantly learning throughout the race.”
Do you feel like this year is going better than last year?
“Way better. I feel like last year we honestly had a good year with some bad luck here and there. We were close to winning Bristol. I had a pole in Dover. We had a lot of speed last year. Moving forward with Jeff Meendering (crew chief), I think he’s actually brought a lot of good to the table. He’s been with obviously different manufacturers and different teams as well. There’s just a bunch of knowledge now that’s been kind of tossed around and added to the bunch. I think we’ve upped our game to top fives now. I think that’s kind of where we’re at currently. Here and there at our best tracks, we’re searching for wins.”
How important were these two off weeks for you and the team?
“It helps kind of get the team regrouped. You try not to lose sight of how well we have been running. We can get some cars ahead at the shop a little bit. I was fortunate enough to run with KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) at Kansas there in their Tundra, so that was kind of a good little filler for our off week. I think that went well too – it was a top five, so it kind of got my confidence built back up some on the race track.”
Are you running where you should in the middle of the race?
“Yeah, I think that one thing that Jeff Meendering does really well is constantly builds on the car the entire race. We start out probably in the 10th-place spot and work on it until the very end and then finally get ourselves in the top-five, top-four spot. I think that’s where we’ve been doing a really good job executing on these races. We’ve just got to now figure out how to get a little more speed at the beginning of the day to get better at the end.”
What are your expectations over these next few races?
“We’re going to try some new stuff at Pocono (Raceway) going forward. A lot of guys have been known to shift at that track some, so I think – I’ve never done that before, but I think we’re getting beat doing that some so we’re going to try some different things like that, different styles. I’ve already changed a lot of stuff in my cockpit to try to become better as well. We’re just going to keep working on it. I think that at the very end of the year we’re going to be where we need to be.”
