First win since 2022 and second career win at Darlington
DARLINGTON, S.C. (April 5, 2025) – Brandon Jones used a premier restart in the final laps Saturday afternoon to propel his No. 20 Toyota GR Supra to victory in the Xfinity Series race at Darlington Raceway. The result is Jones’ first win of the season and first since Martinsville in 2022, also with Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR). Jones, who started second on Saturday, was in the top of the field for most of the afternoon and led the final 12 laps after the late restart to score the victory.
It’s Jones’ sixth career Xfinity Series win and his second at Darlington Raceway, with his other triumph coming in 2020.
Christopher Bell, doing double duty this weekend at Darlington, started his 80th career Xfinity Series race from the pole position on Saturday in the No. 19 GR Supra for JGR. Bell led the opening 27 laps of the race and was in contention in the final stage, when contact with a competitor hampered his shot at victory and resulted in a 25th-place finish.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)
Darlington Raceway
Race 8 of 33 – 200.8 miles, 147 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, BRANDON JONES
2nd, Chase Elliott*
3rd, Justin Allgaier*
4th, Ross Chastain*
5th, Carson Kvapil *
18th, DEAN THOMPSON
25th, CHRISTOPHER BELL
33rd, TAYLOR GRAY
35th, WILLIAM SAWALICH
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
BRANDON JONES, No. 20 Menards/Turtle Wax Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 1st
Describe your emotions in returning to victory lane.
“This is just one I wanted to make a statement in. Christopher Bell, Chase Elliott; some extremely talented Cup drivers in this field today. Sam McAulay (crew chief), these Joe Gibbs Racing guys, this pit crew, unbelievable! That’s what it takes to win these races. Everyone needs to be bought in, everybody’s got to be at their highest level. I had a restart with some of the best there at the end and knew it was going to be tough on older tires and some of the guys up front. But what an insane couple years it’s been to get back over here; get back mentally to know I’m back in a really good race car to win races again. It feels really good. I have to thank everyone at Turtle Wax, everyone at Menards. John Menard (founder and owner, Menards), everyone over there. They’ve become such good friends to me and family over a 10-year stretch racing Xfinity Series cars. For them to stick with us, it means a lot. I know this win means a lot for Menards and their whole family. I feel like there’s definitely more to come, but all day, we were as fast as Xfinity mobile. I thought our qualifying run was great and that we were the car to beat in practice. It all just worked itself out. What kept me going during those last few laps was, just telling myself, ‘it’s going to work out. There won’t be a caution. It’ll be fine.’ Because how many times have you seen that, where there’s a caution right at the end with a few to go and then you get used up on a restart. Just nice to have it all work out. We fired on all cylinders today. Everybody did. This is huge momentum for us.”
On that last restart, how did you find the right way to maneuver it for the win?
“Best thing for me to do was get by those lap cars and hope to have them race side-by-side, which I’m not sure if that’s exactly how it happened. I was pretty efficient in getting by those cars in front with older tires. I didn’t want to make it three-wide as you need the middle lane to make the pass. I wanted to get Jeb (Burton) out there a little bit, then go to work on him and make quick work of it, which I did. I glanced up in the mirror a few times and had to see the gaps and it continued to open itself up. We, both myself and Sam on the box, made great calls to get our Toyota GR Supra the adjustment it needed to fire off for a couple laps and man, it finally worked out! I don’t think there’s a scratch on the right side of this thing. So, didn’t have to do it on the top or do anything crazy. I thought I did a good job at the end there, searching. I was kind of glued to the bottom in (turns) three and four for a long time and then realized that wasn’t going to work. Realized I was getting passed early on during those restarts, so knew I had to get off that to win the race. So yeah, found some speed, found the grip and made it work!”
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