Toyota Racing – Erik Jones
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
KANSAS CITY (July 22, 2020) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Erik Jones was made available to media via videoconference in advance of the race at Kansas Speedway:
ERIK JONES, No. 20 Reser’s ‘Thanks Employees’ Toyota Camry, Joe Gibbs Racing
What are you planning for your off-weekend during this pandemic?
“It’s a little different. I’m actually heading back to Michigan and it’s my best friend’s wedding so I’m the best man there. Going back to that. A little bit different wedding than what we all were planning on, but still going to get to do it. Little different, but it’s definitely nice to have this coming up. We’ve been working really hard between the doubleheader races and the Sunday and Wednesday races, it’s really been busy for everybody. For the drivers, for the teams – it’s nice to have an off-weekend coming up.”
Will you focus more on stage points to get one of the final Playoff spots or continue to focus on getting the race win?
“It’s a fine balance. We obviously need to get some points and had two guys behind us in points jump us and get wins to get in the Playoffs. That makes things a little bit trickier and kind of put us in a worse spot. I think looking at it, if we can top-five it each week in the next eight races, I feel comfortable about pointing our way in. I don’t think we need anybody to have mistakes. The worst case would be having another person behind us in points win and jumping us again, that would put us in a pretty tough spot. Winning is the goal, but I think we do have to focus a little bit on stage points coming up, especially with some of the wild card races. We’ve got the Daytona road course, we’ve got the Daytona oval obviously as the regular season ender. Those are two races you kind of have to prepare for and try to stack some points up for so if things go wrong there, you have a cushion. Obviously, we would just love to win and I think we could do that tomorrow night. We definitely need to get some points heading in our direction too and some of that is going to have to be from stage points.”
What do you remember about your first career Cup Series start at Kansas Speedway in 2015 when you filled in for Kyle Busch?
“It was obviously a really cool experience. I think I had not been 18 very long and got the call that I was going to get to fill in at Kansas maybe a week and a half before that. It was an awesome experience for me. I had never really driven a Cup car much before I filled in at Bristol a little before that in the middle of the race in the 11 car and then getting the call to do that was cool. My first full Cup weekend, getting to practice and everything. I remember we were really fast. We led a practice and had a good qualifying run up in 12th and ran strong all day. I think we were up in the top-five when we crashed. It was a really cool day just to get out there and race with all those guys for the first time. I hadn’t raced with all the Cup guys other than the guys that had spent a lot of time in the Xfinity races. Getting out there and having the opportunity I had to race against Jeff (Gordon) and Tony (Stewart) and all those guys, that was really cool and just a weekend I’ll never forget. I was super busy that weekend. I was running trucks as well so it was a double-duty weekend for me and that was cool. I think my first double-duty weekend I really ran involved in the Cup Series. That was a cool experience as well.”
How do you feel about your chances at Kansas tomorrow night?
“I think I look at the next few races and Kansas is probably a great opportunity for us to win and it’s a place we’ve run really strong. Last year we ran really well there and had a shot I felt like to win, if the race had played out a little bit differently for us. I think it will be the same tomorrow. I really feel confident about the cars we’ve had at Kansas the last few years, especially in the night races that we’ve had there. Last year, the night race was our best race. I’m looking forward to it. It’s definitely been tough this year, the competition has really changed their game plan a lot and is doing similar things that I feel like JGR as done over the last year that made us really good wit this package. The competition has kind of caught onto that and done some similar things to really make their cars or building their cars a little bit different. It’s been tougher to race and tougher to pass. The opportunities for differences between speed and cars is less it seems like this year so it’s hard to make your way through the field. I think Kansas is a cool place just because it’s so wide and there’s so many options. That’s the thing this package needs, you need to be able to get clean air and go to different lanes. Kansas has that so that’s what I really enjoy about it.”
With these races stacked up and the heat in the Texas race, where are you physically in your recovery to get ready for Kansas?
“I feel good. I would say the Indianapolis wreck was definitely hard on the body. I was a little sore after that one, but feeling good now from that. I feel good. The Texas race was tough, it was hot. I didn’t feel bad during the race or even really after the race, but I definitely sweat a ton. I realized that after I got out of the car and got back home that night and was just trying to drink a bunch of fluids and even the next day I wasn’t totally rehydrated. It’s hard to keep up, especially when we go from the race Sunday to now racing again tomorrow night. It’s not easy to keep up with your hydration through that.”
What are the emotions when you see drivers behind you in points get race wins making your Playoff situation more dire?
“It’s frustrating when you see it because you know it’s worst case for our situation. Guys behind us in points, when they win, it just bumps us farther out and gives us a bigger deficit to make up. I was obviously really happy to see Cole (Custer) win, he’s a good buddy of mine and that was pretty cool. At the same time, it’s frustrating because he bumped us a little farther out. It’s tough. You try not to think about it too much, but when you get down to the situation, there’s eight races left to go in the regular season and we have some points to make up so you have to focus on it. It’s unfortunate because we were in a similar spot last year and we were able to go win Darlington there with a couple races left in the regular season, which was awesome, but it’s not fun having to be in that spot again. Hopefully, we can go out and continue to run. I felt like Texas was a good day for us and just having a smooth day and something where nothing went wrong, we didn’t have any crazy penalties or get in a wreck or blow a tire so that was nice. Just needed a smooth day and that’s what we had. I think if we can keep doing that, I see no reason why we can’t for sure top-10 all these next eight and even top-five a few here and contend for a win. I know some of these tracks are going to be really strong for us. It is frustrating though when you see those guys behind you jump you in points when they win.”
Is there more pressure or frustration when you’re in contract negotiations or does your resume speak for itself?
“I think it’s a little bit of both. It’s a performance industry and we’ve been able to make the Playoffs the last two years. I feel confident still that we’re going to make them this year. It’s frustrating when you’re in that spot and I don’t feel like all of what we’ve done to be in this spot is our own doing. We’ve had some bad races that things just didn’t go our way. Some of it has been our fault. I think it’s a combination of both. You feel the pressure and you want to get in the Playoffs and you want to perform for your team, for your sponsors and for everybody. But you hope that you can look over the course of your career and some of the things you’ve done over the last three years are going to add into that as well. I don’t think four or six races decide the fate of your career by any means and I’ve had a really good relationship with JGR for quite a few years now. I put probably the most pressure on myself. I wouldn’t say JGR ever comes to me and asks questions or questions why you’re in this spot. They see the same things we do and the same things we struggle each weekend and why we’re in this spot. People aren’t blind to that. The pressure I would say comes from me. I just want to run well, I want to content, I want to win races, I want to be in the Playoffs, I want to contend for championships. That’s the goal so that’s what we have to keep working towards.”
How difficult has the lack of practice and qualifying been to have to rely on the random draw and what are the challenges to get the setup right when you unload?
“Both are really tough. I think not qualifying has been a bummer because I know going to Kansas, we could start better than wherever we’re going to draw, which is going to be from 13th on back to 24th, or somewhere in there. That part is frustrating and you wish you could go out and qualify because I know we can qualify up in the top-10 at a lot of these places. We could qualify better than where we’ve been starting. That’s tough and then not having practice is tough too because you have to hit it so perfect off the truck. There are so many weekends when you do and we have. There’s some races where I feel like we’ve been really close at the start of the races, but the days where you unload and it’s tough, I can point to a couple – maybe Martinsville is one that really pops up in my head where we unloaded and we just weren’t good. We couldn’t fix it. You can’t fix it over the course of the race and you can’t come in and change shocks or springs or nose weight. It’s hard when you have a limited number of adjustments. You can only really change wedge and panhard bar. That makes it a pretty small box to work in when you’re trying to change things under a race condition. That’s the tough part to me. There’s been days in practice where we unload and I feel like we don’t change anything and we’re pretty good. Some days, you’re thankful you have that practice and have two 50-minute sessions to work through, get your car better and at the end, you can really come through a lot stronger and plus it gives you the opportunity, having practice, you know what the track is going to do from practice to the race. You can really adjust your car to get it driving the way you need to for the race and that’s an advantage as well. It has been tougher.”
How excited are you for the doubleheader in Michigan?
“I’m excited. Racing at Michigan is always cool and I just love having the opportunity to win at the home track. That place is only an hour-and-a-half from where I grew up so it would be an awesome place to win at. I can’t think of one much cooler, excluding crown jewel races. The double header was actually really smooth at Pocono. We had a tough weekend because we got wrecked on Saturday so we had to go to a backup car for Sunday and start from the back. That made our day a little longer. The double header I thought went really smooth. It was cool to go out there and race back-to-back days. I felt as a driver it was fun. I enjoyed it and I think Michigan will be the same thing. It’s going to be cool just to go out there and run back-to-back days. I’ll have two opportunities to win at my home track. It’s cool to have two opportunities to win on back-to-back days. We saw it in the Xfinity Series with back-to-back winner on both doubleheader races they had so that would be a cool opportunity and cool thing to do in the Cup Series.”
How weird will it be to not have family and friends at the track in Michigan?
“It’s kind of a bummer because I do get a lot of family out there and usually try to get a setup to where they can hang out and tailgate, that’s always really fun. We usually have 40 or 50 guests come out to that race and watch either from the grandstands or somewhere in the infield and it’s an opportunity for a lot of friends and family that I have to come out and watch a race because they all are from that area and they can’t travel to some of the races that we go to that are farther away. It’s a cool congregation and getting to usually spend the week up there ahead of time visiting friends and family is always a lot of fun and getting to catch up with everybody that I hadn’t seen through the year. When we’re in our season, it’s pretty crazy and we don’t have a lot of time to spend with friends and family so it’s cool to just have an opportunity to catch up with them. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m going to have as much this time. It’s definitely a bummer in a lot of ways, but I guess the other side of it, I understand why we don’t have fans there. I wish we could, but hopefully next year we can come back and have fans back in the stands.”
Do you think the lack of practice is hurting you after only four years in the series?
“I think you lose a little bit. Like I talked about, it’s just a thing where we go to a lot of these places and I know what the track is going to do through the weekend and going into the race. If it’s a night race, I know what to do in the daytime to have my car driving good at night and Chris (Gayle, crew chief) knows that as well. It definitely hurts it because you rely on so much on simulation now going into the weekend and hoping that you’re getting it right. Our simulation is good, don’t get me wrong and there’s times where we have hit it right on the head. It would just be nice to get some laps on the track. Even if you unload and you’re really close, there’s still things you can do to optimize. Whether it’s getting heights better, tuning on the car, trying different packages – there’s always something that you can improve on. I feel like there’s definitely been weekends it’s hurt us. I thought Texas it did hurt us a fair amount. I felt like we could have been a lot better. We ran decent. Sixth-place is good for us, but I felt like that’s been one of our stronger tracks and it’s because in practice we can really work and make our car a lot better. I know in practice what I need my car to do to be good in the race and it was lacking a lot of things I always really look for at Texas that makes us fast in the race. It does hurt. I think it’s hurt some more than others. I’m kind of right in the middle of the road. It’s what we’ve got and we’re dealing with it the rest of the year and everybody is on the same plan. We’ve got the continue to try to optimize it.”
Do you agree with Kyle Busch that the JGR cars don’t currently have enough speed?
“I think we’re behind a little bit maybe. Obviously, we’re not as dominant as we were last year. I think anybody can point that out. I don’t think we’ve lost any speed, I think the rest of the guys have just caught up and caught onto some of the stuff that we were doing last year that made us really fast. It’s harder. You have to run your car harder. I think last year we always had so much speed in reserve that we were able to go out and kind of take it easy through the day and put ourselves in position to have a chance to win it seemed like all the time. This year, it’s definitely a little bit different. You don’t have practice optimized so sometimes you’re kind of on a razors edge of really hitting it right and really missing it. That makes it tough, but everybody is so close on speed, its really hard to pass. Texas was really challenging to pass. Kentucky was really challenging to pass because everybody is running really similar speeds and the PJ1 has kind of made those places one groove and it’s definitely been more of a challenge to pass with the PJ1 down. You really have to get your car handling good in the bottom grooves. Sometimes the bottom groove doesn’t come in right away either. It’s definitely harder this year. I don’t know that we’ve lost speed, I think everybody else has gotten a little faster. I know we’re working and we’re trying to get stuff better. It’s definitely tough with everything going on right now. You can’t really do some of the same stuff you do to try to improve your car in a normal year so it’s kind of tough to work through all that.”
What do you need to improve on as the Playoffs approach?
“I think we’ve been working hard. I think some of it has been mistakes on our end. Some of it has just been things we can’t control. I think Texas was a good example of just having a smooth weekend. We’ve been making some changes with our pit crew to try to continue to improve there and I think we’ve been getting better each week. I think it’s just a matter of not making mistakes. Texas, we just went out and had a mistake-free day. We didn’t make any mistakes on pit road. I didn’t make any on the race track, no penalties and that’s what we need. If we can keep having smooth and consistent days like that, we’re going to run top-10, top-five every week and if you can run up there in the top-five, wins are going to come. We’ve seen it the last few races where the 41 (Cole Custer) and the 3 (Austin Dillon) win races and they were just up there at the end and had clean air and as good of a chance as anybody to win. We have to put ourselves in those positions and I think we’re adjusting strategy accordingly to what it’s going to take to get clean air because that seems to be what’s really important at the end of these races. We had four tires at the end, but I wasn’t really going anywhere with it. The guys up front took two tires or no tires. We have to adjust accordingly to that and play our races more on that side of things and take some more risks probably to get up front at the end and give ourselves a shot to be on the front row and have clean air for those late-race restart to see if you can hold them off.”
What do you think of the Daytona road course and Daytona oval as deciding factors for the final Playoff spots?
“It’s going to be interesting. I’ve never made any laps on the Daytona road course and it sounds like things are kind of changing daily with what we’re going to run there. Trying to figure all that out right now and with no practice there, it’s going to be really tough. We will have to do a lot of simulator time and get in with TRD and try to take advantage of that. Hopefully, that will get us enough of a footprint to be able to go out there and lean on when we make our first few laps around there. Then obviously the last race of the regular season being at the Daytona oval is going to be just wild with guys making last ditch efforts to get a win and put themselves in the Playoffs. Throwing big blocks and making crazy moves and seeing a lot of wrecks probably. I hope we’re in a good position by the time we get to that point because it’s going to be pretty wild.”
Looking forward, would you prefer to continue with two races in a week or revert back to one race per week?
“I really don’t mind the two races in a week as long as we can find a way to continue to make it not a killer on teams and travel and stuff, I think it’s been fine. I look at the season and what we’ve been able to do here over the last two or three months, squeezing the races that we’ve done proves we can do it. I think ending the season a little bit earlier in the year has been something we’re trying to kind of work towards anyways. If that’s what it takes to do it, I would be all for it. If we can end the season a few weeks earlier, it that means some doubleheaders or mid-week races, I think that would be fine. I haven’t had a problem with it. It’s definitely more strenuous and busy as a driver, but I think it’s fun to run that many races back-to-back, especially if you have a bad race on Sunday, it’s nice to get to go back Wednesday or Thursday and try it again and get that monkey off your back really quick.”
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