Toyota GAZOO Racing – Erik Jones
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
CONCORD, N.C. (October 4, 2025) – LEGACY MOTOR CLUB driver Erik Jones was made available to the media on Saturday prior to practice for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.
ERIK JONES, No. 43 TriState Vacuum & Rental, LLC Toyota Camry XSE, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB
Can you give us an update on the program you are doing with the Erik Jones Foundation this weekend?
“Yeah, I’m sure you guys have seen over the last handful of years – the pink window nets have been kind of a thing that has happened every year annually with the window nets on the cars on Sunday, and we’ve been grateful take this program over for the third year now with the Erik Jones Foundation, and obviously raising money for breast cancer awareness. We have three charities that we’re going to donate to this year with the proceeds from this program. A couple of just cool things real quick. Almost every team this year purchased their window nets – that’s already raised $11,000 for the program before the auction even began. The auction opened on Wednesday. And we’re bidding these window nets up, so excited about that. We also added these pull tabs this year, which are on the inside the race cars as well, to help open the window nets, and we’re selling those for $20 apiece on the website to also help raise money, that’ll go towards the funds as well. So pretty fun and been fun to expand it.”
Did I hear correctly that you had Jack Hawksworth come up for some road course prep?
Yeah, we’ve had Jack (Hawksworth, Lexus Factory Driver) help, maybe not every road course this year – Mexico, we did some prep, and with him, then here. Jack’s been helping us a little bit. We were just kind of trying to – our road course program has frankly been pretty weak at our company for the last few years, so just trying to get better, trying to get the cars better, get us better. Obviously, Jack has a ton of road course experience. He has drove the Cup car at some tests and so we had him up on Wednesday going over some stuff with him.”
What are some of the things or questions you have asked him based on his background versus yours?
“Yeah, I just ask him a lot of questions on, honestly, I get a lot out of watching him drive and the way he approaches the course on the sim and kind of what he focuses on. So, a lot of my questions are kind of centered around why he’s doing certain things, because I’m just not a road course guy by nature. So, he does things a little bit different sometimes, and I’m curious as to why and figuring those parts and pieces out. I felt like this year, Watkins Glen was when things kind of finally started to click for me in the Next Gen car a little bit on the road courses and what it wanted and needed. And a lot of that was from Jack (Hawksworth, Lexus Factory Driver) and what we’ve kind of went through this year. So, yeah, most of my questions are just centered, you know, I’ve been to all of these road courses, so kind of know how to get around them, but the technique and the little things are where I’m trying to get better and watching him and figuring out why and asking him why has been the biggest part.”
How do you race the Playoff drivers as a non-Playoff driver?
“I’ve always, obviously there’s a couple of ways I look at it, I guess. You know, number one, if it’s a day where we’re in contention to win and running really well, I’m going to do everything I can to win. If it’s a day, you know, we’re running 18th, and you got a guy battling through the field and he’s trying to make his way above the cut line. It’s going to be a bit different. You know, I think they’ve earned that respect, right? They raced all year to be in the playoffs, and they’ve worked hard and now be in the Round of 12 and having an opportunity to go to the Round of 8. So, in my opinion, I think it’s fairly disrespectful if you didn’t give them that service a little bit, I would hope to have that returned, in the future, hopefully, when we’re a playoff team and in that spot. I think it’s pretty reciprocal. I think, you know, like I said, they’ve earned that right, so it’s just what you really should be doing.”
What have the ups-and-downs of this season been like as a new father?
“Yeah, I think you are forced to get over things quicker. I feel like I’ve always done pretty good of kind of separating, racing and home and I’ve always been a guy that I loved to race, but racing isn’t my life. It’s what I do, right? That’s how I make the living, and it’s what I do. I’ve always been able to kind of separate that from home. But I think it’s made that easier, you know, a day, that’s not gone well. If David’s (Jones’ son) at the track, you get back to the motorhome and as frustrated as maybe you are, he’s smiling and laughing just because you’re back and reaching for you and wanting to hang out, so it’s kind of hard to be mad at that point or even be thinking about the race anymore. I think it’s probably made my approach better, my focus better. I think, you know, for me, I want to be able to one day sit with him and look back and just tell him how I did things and why I did things this way and show him that. So just leading, I guess, by example a little bit has probably been more encouraged just by having him around. But I think it’s made the bad days easier. I think just quicker to get over. It’s made the good days more fun in some ways. So, it’s definitely kind of a balance from before.”
How does having a child help you move forward from a bad day?
“Yeah, I would say, you know, this year, I would say this year what’s how I kind of thought it would go. I think maybe there was a bit higher expectation from the company, for our program this year. I felt like this year’s is, like I said, I think it’s how I expected. I wish it would have been, you know, more successful. I think we’ve had times that we’ve had cars that we’re capable of running or contending for wins. I would say definitely Indy and Darlington are two that standout, but it’s extremely hard in this current day and age to say, okay, we had two races, we had race winning speed. Your odds of winning two times out of 38 are pretty low, you know, you’ve got to be in a position where you’re constantly running up there, constantly contention in the top-five, because when you get in those days and you’re not always up there, it puts a lot of pressure on the pit crew, puts a lot of pressure on the driver, the crew chief, everybody to make good calls and good decisions.
So, you’ve got to get settled in that. You’ve got to be settled and running up front and contending for wins. Everybody’s got to be comfortable with it, and we’re just not at that point. There are just parts of our program that aren’t where they need to be, our road course stuff, short track stuff hasn’t been there. Our mile-and-a-half stuff has been pretty good for the most part. So, we’re just still building, you know, I think it’s kind of went along the line of where I I see it. I think this was the first year we had good funding, and we’ve had good people and data and it’s just this was a good base building year for us to get a notebook into next year and hopefully it just kind of step up from that.”
How do you balance for racing for wins versus preparing for 2026?
“I guess it’s a bit track dependent. This weekend, tomorrow, , you know, working on definitely improving for ‘26, just with our road course stuff hasn’t been where we’ve wanted. The 42 team had a test at Kershaw (Carolina Motorsports Park), a little while back, hopefully we learned some stuff that we’re trying. It’s a way different package we have here this weekend than what we’ve had on the other road courses, so we’re hoping to learn from that. Looking forward to Talladega, obviously going for the win. Hope we can grab one there. Martinsville, Phoenix, I would say, probably tougher to contend. Phoenix would be really tough to contend with the championship guys. Martinsville will be tough, just with where our program is at. So, you know, Talladega would be a good shot to win, and the rest, I would say, will be continuing to build that notebook now for us.”
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