Toyota Racing – Erik Jones
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes
BROOKLYN, Mich (August 17, 2024) – LEGACY MOTOR CLUB driver Erik Jones was made available to the media on Saturday prior to practice for the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway.
ERIK JONES, No. 43 Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB
How do you prepare for this race with the unpredictability due to the weather?
“Yeah, it is a bummer. I’ve been here since Tuesday and the weather has been great since yesterday morning. It is tough. Going through today, I feel like we are probably going to get practice in, but I’m not sure about qualifying – that is still hit or miss. I feel like tomorrow is going to be similar – hit or miss. It is just challenging from the sense that you don’t know what the track is going to do. Really, with yourself, and getting ready to go on the track and knowing what’s going on – it’s a hassle, for everybody, for us, for the fans – I feel like we get a good crowd here over the last few years. Rain has just torn that up. It’s a bummer. It definitely makes it challenging. I would love a nice, good 78-degree sunny day, like we have had a lot of the summer. It would be nice.”
If NASCAR had not done anything to Austin Dillon, would you have done something similar to make the Playoffs?
“No. No, not a chance. I don’t race that way. I wouldn’t have done it. I can probably count – I honestly don’t know – less than five times that I’ve wrecked anyone intentionally in my entire career. Just not the way I race. Everyone’s got their own code. Everybody has different ways that they go about it. For me, that’s just not the way I raced.”
What if your team said you have to do it?
“I don’t think I could that. That’s not to say that things don’t change in the moment, and how you were raced before that changes things. Obviously, that was not the situation here, but it depends on what is going down, but it is really not in my playbook.”
How do you see racing at the Cup Series level go down to the grassroots level?
“It is funny you ask that question. I was doing some media calls earlier this week and that exact topic kind of inadvertently came up. I guess I was discussing a little bit about it and whether we like it or not, it is a trickle-down effect. What we do on Sunday trickles down and not just to Xfinity and Trucks and ARCA; it trickles down to late models, street stocks, front wheel drives, quarter midgets, go-karts – all of these guys and kids watch what we do on Sunday, and think what we do is right, so I think racing has changed a lot since 2009 – that was the first time I race a full size car, and I can vividly remember my dad and I talking about what this year was about was earning respect. Do not be out there running into people. It is not what we are doing. You have to give these guys respect – earn their respect and then when we get to that point, we will go race. That is how we did things. Things have changed a lot. Racing has gotten a lot more aggressive for a lot of different reasons – cars, it is hard to pass, and everything else. I have seen it. I was watching the CARS Tour race last night at Ace, and those guys could barely go more than 10 laps without a yellow coming out – somebody is spinning somebody, somebody is wrecking somebody. It is not what I enjoy in racing. Some bumping and banging is fine. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve for sure moved a guy up out of the way for a win. Everybody has that has won a race at some point, but I think there is a line there. Wrecking cars and wrecking stuff out has become more and more acceptable. It just wasn’t really an option when I was younger. We just couldn’t rebuild cars over and over. Things have changed in that aspect, but it is definitely a trickle-down effect.”
Five of the last seven races at Daytona have been won by drivers who were not in the Playoffs. How is Daytona an opportunity and also a challenge?
“It is equal parts both. It is definitely an opportunity. There is no reason that we don’t go to Daytona for a chance to win for sure. How hard is it to take advantage of that opportunity? It is pretty tough. That race is probably more challenging than any of them. I think it is good working with TRD, kind of having a smaller pack. We’ve got eight cars and that is kind of easier to work with as far as pit road. Talladega, obviously, we didn’t make it look easy, but we had a good plan going. I think that helps out. A lot of in Playoff racing, and the way I look at it – it is kind of life too. Some of it is good and bad luck chips. You have to draw each one a little bit, and superspeedway racing is just that. You are going to keep drawing those bad numbers no matter how good you run or how good of a spot that you are in, but at one point, you are going to draw that right card and be in the right spot and make the right move. Some of that is on yourself, and what you do as a driver, and how fast your car is, but you do have to have a lot of things go your way to win too.”
Can you talk about how special it was to have your new deal come out the week you come home?
“It was nice. We got it done recently, and announced it here at Michigan, so I was happy to get it done. It was a pretty easy negotiation, really. I think LEGACY was wanting me back, and I was wanting to go back. Things went really smooth and really quick. I spent my two weeks off up here, so I got to do quite a bit. I went up to the UP and spent a week up there with family and chill out at home in Bryon since Tuesday night. I did to get to hit some local spots close to home that I like to go to. It’s always nice to get home when we can – see friends, see family, and do some things that we all like to do.”
Did you have to talk to some other teams before deciding to return to LEGACY MOTOR CLUB?
“I think you always take a look when this comes around. There was no advance discussions but the team encouraged that. They knew the whole time where I was at, and what I was interested in doing, but we pretty quickly came to a point to redoing a deal with LEGACY. For me, looking at the landscape and where everything was at, what was possibly available and what other opportunities were out there – none of them were enticing enough for me that made me want to make a move. It is a challenge to make a move. It is a big move to switch teams, not matter what you are doing. For me, unless it was going to be a huge leap to a currently a race winning, championship contending team, I just wasn’t interested. I think we are building that right now with LEGACY, and that is a time away right now, but unless that was an instant move that I could make, I wasn’t changing.”
What is the one thing that you see at LEGACY MOTOR CLUB that makes you know that you can grow with them?
“We are kind of getting to an important part of my career – the next stretch of my career, the next 10 years – are going to be some of my best, I would like to think. I hope that I’m in equipment that is good enough to take advantage of it. There is a lot that I still want to do in the Cup Series, and a lot of goals that I have. Looking at the landscape of LEGACY, obviously, made the move to Toyota – and it has been a challenge. It has been a big undertaking for us, but we have recently brough on more people to kind of build that gap and continue to grow that and figure out how we are going to make ourselves a race winning team. It has been a lot of emotion right. I came to the 43 and it was definitely not a race winning team, and then we got back to a race winning team, and now we are back to in the ebb and flow of not being where we want to be, so but right now, regardless of what the results are showing, I would say that we are in a better spot for the future, than it’s really ever been since I’ve been in the 43 car.”
When you made the decision to return, did you have any discussions with LEGACY MOTOR CLUB on the plan to return to competitiveness?
“I had multiple sit downs with Jimmie (Johnson), Cal (Wells), who is our president there and diving into – okay, here is where we are. We see it. We don’t ignore the fact and how are we going to get where we want to be. It was laid out to me, well enough, that I felt good about coming back. There is a plan in place. There are some people that were in the works of being hired, that weren’t quite down yet when I was redoing my deal. Some are there now, some are still coming in. There are contracts in place, and people have to finish their obligations out. There are enough people coming in that I felt confident that we would see improvement on our end, and I think what TRD has been doing on their end to start giving us what we need. At this point, we kind of have a good list of items that we feel like we need, and what we have and need to be better – to run better. There were definitely multiple conversations about that. I don’t think involved wants to run how we have. We want to be a race winning team. There is a longer road to get there currently. There are plans in place to make it work.”
Looking ahead at Darlington, what is it about Darlington that makes you so good there? Can the driver make up the difference at that track?
“A little bit. I think it is probably less than it has been ever with the Next Gen car. It is just tough because everyone is so close. There is maybe a little more that you can do there – you can save some tire, and you are moving the line around so much – there is more options there than a lot of places that we go. I’m not going to say that it is all driver. That’s not true. You can make a little bit of difference. I’ve always felt good at the track as soon as I got there for the first time in Xfinity. I really liked it. It really reminded me a lot of how I grew up racing – kind of racing the track and not necessarily racing your competitors as much. You are just kind of focusing on yourself and taking care of your equipment and your car. You are probably going to find yourself in a pretty good position if your car is good that day. I’ve definitely had some bad cars at Darlington – not like we went there and ran top-five every time, for sure in the 500, we’ve trended to run better with how things have went. I think some of it is the transition from day to night, and the spring race at Darlington, I don’t run as good at. It really is a different race with the way you have to run it. The 500 has always been the better one.”
About Toyota
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