Toyota GAZOO Racing – Brandon Jones
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
BRISTOL, Tenn. (April 12, 2025) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Brandon Jones was made available to the media on Saturday prior to practice for the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Bristol Motor Speedway.
BRANDON JONES, No. 20 Menards/Pelonis Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Is the pressure off with a win in the pocket?
“Yeah, it is, I think. I was getting asked earlier in the week if there is more pressure to go win more, and I don’t think that is the case. I think momentum is infectious and I think once you open the valve, they start flowing pretty easy. It is funny how that typically works. I have been a receiver on that end as well, right? So, you just start racing a little differently – you put yourself in, I guess from the outside, riskier situations, but the end result – those are the moves that result in wins. I think if you come to these races, and you think I’ve got to win, so you start doing all of these little things, like ‘well, let’s not race this guy too hard, or let’s not push the limit on pit road too hard – like you are trying to minimize all of these little mistakes, but all you are doing is hurting yourself and putting yourself behind the eight-ball, so now, what is there to lose? We can go try to get a bunch of points – I think that is our agenda now is trying to rack up some stages, try to get a lot of points and continue to get further along in the point standings that we can in the first round here. It is still really early, which is nice, so there is a lot of time to continue to make ground up and maybe become a contender for this regular season. I think that this group is jelling super well right now. Sam McAuley is a really, really good crew chief and we are starting to really click with each other and really make the right adjustments during the race and even unloading with better speed than we started the season with as well. It is all starting to come together and we are doing it as a group, which is why I think it is working. I don’t think there is one person overpowering the other. We all sit down together all week long and do this together. We prepare together, so that is kind of my mentality. I take this – kind of like you would run a military unit – you get everybody in a room. You all brief before you go out there and then you do it as a group. That is kind of the way I’ve been trying to run my race team, and I think we are doing a really good job of it.”
What has it been like coming home per say to Joe Gibbs Racing?
“I’m glad because there are the little unknowns – you go over to an organization that – it does have speed every week, and you can’t get it done there, so you are like – what is that going to look like if I come back and don’t get success or don’t have success, so there was a little bit in the back of my mind of the concern of that, but at the same time, I believed in this organization as well. I believed in Joe Gibbs Racing. I think Joe (Gibbs, owner and founder, Joe Gibbs Racing) believed in me and kind of welcomed us with open arms. They said there was a spot if we wanted to try to make it work. That just felt right. I think that is all you have to do in life in these decisions – sometimes they aren’t always the right move and the right path for you. If it feels right in the moment, take it – don’t worry about all of the repercussions of the move, just go with what your heart is telling you to do. It felt right to go to JR Motorsports, and it felt right to come back to Joe Gibbs Racing.”
What was the feeling like on the last lap at Darlington?
“What I do after all of these races is I sit down – and if I have a bad week, I will be like, what was causing the bad week? If I didn’t have the result I expected going into it, what was the things mentally going on in my head and what was the circumstances and situations. Every time that I win a race, I sit down and look at it – and nothing really intimidated me the entire race. You had some of the best Cup races in the field – and I would get around Christopher Bell and Chase (Elliott) and all of those guys. I didn’t really care who it was. I thought they were another competitor. I raced them really aggressively and really hard at the same time. I don’t know – I just felt like everything was just turned on, everything flowed properly. Everything flowed really well. There was never a bad pit stop. We never really had a bad restart. If we did, I was really resourceful and found solutions on how to make it better. The whole day seemed elevated. I think we all came into it with a strong mindset. I think we came into Darlington with momentum too. I know the finishes from Martinsville and some of those places didn’t really show it, but we started to tap into a lot of speed and really had the speed the entire race – not just at the very end, so I felt that momentum had shifted – I was like I don’t know when it is going to happen, but I felt like we were getting a lot closer.”
How do you see Justin Allgaier as a fellow competitor?
“Justin (Allgaier) is my buddy. I think we have raced together as long as anybody has out here. We have been in the Xfinity Series a long time together. We have raced around each other for a long time. Justin is one of those guys – there is a lot of people you can go to from advice in this garage, and you are not quite confident that you are getting the truth, and all of the answers that you are really looking for but with Justin, you can go to him with a question and he is going to give you the right one. He is going to lay it out there and tell you exactly what you need to hear, so that is pretty cool from a driver – there are not many people that want to give secrets out and give things that they learned out because that is their advantages, so they’ve taken plenty of years to try to figure this out themselves, so you have to now go and earn it and figure it out yourself. Justin does a good job of that. We always had a good time at JR Motorsports together. We went to plenty of meetings with him and talked through things. We were doing the Josh Wise program together at one point – working out together. I’ve known Justin for a long time. It was cool to hear those remarks from him, and kind of nice to be solidified again as a contender to win races by some of the better ones in the field.”
What is your push right now?
“I think that ironically with the failures the last couple of years I had to dig deep into myself because when I came to Joe Gibbs Racing it was all on the table. I was more of the person coming into a lot of knowledge, data and a lot of things that the crew chief was just really advanced at doing. I walked in kind of big eyed – this is a lot of information to take in, so I had four years, or whatever that was to go over all of that data and all of the stuff we were looking at. When it came to JR Motorsports, the people were really smart there, but they didn’t quite have that level of notebooks and things that I think that Joe Gibbs Racing had. They did it more old school racer way – not engineering data driven way. I almost was bringing all of that and trying to elevate that game over there, and throughout that process, it kind of made me more of a team leader. I don’t think before I knew how to do that. I was kind of like coming in as the new guy at Joe Gibbs Racing and letting them teach me. Not saying that I went over there and taught them anything, right, but I felt like the driver where ‘we were doing this over here a little bit differently, let’s trying to bring this into this program and try to make this better.’ So, through all of that, I was learning a lot about myself and trying to figure out – do I speak up, how can I insert myself to make this program even better than it is. That just kind of helped my get more to the team leader side of stuff – one thing, if you talk to all of the really, really good Cup racers – they talk about leadership and being the main guy that everyone kind of goes to for answers and looks up to. I think that right now, I’m doing a really good job of that. I think I’m finally figuring out how to stand up, be the guy that needs to speak when you need to speak, and say the hard things, when we have to say the hard things. That wasn’t easy. That is not my personality. Everybody that knows me in the garage knows I’m not the guy that is mouthy or is going to talk back to people, but it is not about that. It is about trying to make the whole group better. I think that is the big difference, really, I’m starting to figure out how to be the leader of the team and not being the one looking at the crew chief for answers.”
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