TOYOTA RACING – Brandon Jones
NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Quotes
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (September 2, 2026) – Joe Gibbs Racing driver Brandon Jones was made available to the media on Wednesday as part of NASCAR Chase Media Day at the Charlotte Convention Center.
BRANDON JONES, No. 20 Menards Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
How are you and the No. 20 team entering the Chase and really evaluating what these next nine weeks can hold?
“It’s interesting because these cars have undergone multiple small rule changes here and there. I remember the very first O’Reilly Auto Parts car that I drove, I mean, it was night and day different compared to what we’re driving now. But over the years, once we finally went to this lower downforce package and a few things have slowly gone in different directions. The skew has changed in the rear end housings, there’s been different aero shifts in the cars over the years. The bodies of the Toyotas have undergone changes. We’ve gone from a Camry to a Supra the last few years. So there are things that have just taken some time, I think, for us to go back to R&D with and try to re-get to where that they were at one point. We’re definitely fast. I think that where we’re lacking just slightly is just a little consistency. It’s like everything is there, everything is capable of going on a massive run in this Chase. But we just got to make sure that everything stays consistent when we do it. The pit crew, they’ve been absolutely on fire. The speed at times has been incredibly good. I’ve got to do my part on restarts and short run and having that championship mentality every single time I sit in the car and not taking anything off any drivers. You just have to do all those things going to your and working for you when you start this.”
What do you have to do to catch the JRM (Junior Motorsports) cars?
“I don’t know the answer fully to that. It’s one of those things that’s just got to just continue to take time between each team at Joe Gibbs Racing. I hope that’s what I bring to the table, personally, about being the veteran of the sport and being the veteran at JGR, is I’m trying to help bridge these gaps a little bit. I’ve driven these cars long enough to know what feels right and what doesn’t feel right. I just don’t know the mechanics of the race cars very good. I’m a big studier of the driver, but I’m not much of a studier on the mechanics of the cars. It’s just something I’ve never gotten into. I personally think you have to be in the weeds of that stuff. It is difficult whenever you’re in this slight deficit to another race team because we don’t have data. We don’t have anything that’s live telling us what the car is doing. It’s solely driver feedback. I’ve, over the years and specifically the last few years, I have gotten more in depth and more involved and understanding, at least, what does the splitter do whenever you’re braking?
What is the car actually doing when you’re on the throttle? I’m gaining that kind of confidence, and I’m able to kind of take that and relay it to the team and I think we’re making big strides. It’s nice to see the direction we’ve been going. We’re working really far ahead here in the Toyota Simulator to try to figure out some of these tracks that are coming up that we feel like we’re just down a little bit to the JRM cars and we’re making gains. We’re not completely flipping our setups upside down and doing something completely different, because I think our baselines are there. It’s just small tweaks here and there about trying to get our cars to where they’re capable of, of winning every week.”
Does the veteran mindset help prevent the, “Holy crap, I need to push more and more each week of the Chase”?
“I would say so. I’ve kind of been there, done that scenario already, so that is what helps me in my opinion. The guys that haven’t been here yet or haven’t done this, I don’t know if they would know how to control that emotion throughout the Chase. Some of them might, but it’s one of those things that takes time. It just takes reps at to kind of understand how to control yourself throughout the next few weeks and how to not, when the days are not quite going to standard or expectation, how to not derail the season. How not to derail the last few weeks because it gets to the point where you’re like, “Oh, gosh, I need to win these stages, or I need to win this race. We got to try to get ourselves out of this hole that we’ve dug.” Sometimes, just let them come back to us and just continue to stay on the path that we’re on and just keep making little tweaks. I would probably say I would love to use the term as we go through the Chase of dials, not switches. Don’t go from zero to 100. You take all those little dials and you’re just constantly every week just turning them slightly here and there. And that’s the mental side, that’s the physical driving side, that’s the setup side. As long as we just keep fine-tuning we just keep kind of turning those dials, I think we’re going to be in good shape.”
Do you know when you kind of hit that point of flipping that switch or getting to that point where you’re like, “Okay, I know that I don’t have to push in this exact spot”?
“I have a pretty good sense of that. I think I’ve heard multiple Cup guys in my career tell me that, if you got a winning capability car, don’t take yourself out of contention, right? You need to capitalize on the days that you have a winning car. But if you have a car that’s capable of fifth, try to just take the fifth, and let the guys in front of you maybe make a mistake or two A fantastic day is to get a third with a fifth-place car. What you have got to try to do for yourself and realize the mistakes are going to be crucial and they’re going to be detrimental to your season. You go win a race one week, you wreck the next week, you finish 10th the next week. That’s not going to cut it, you know? It’s the guy that’s fifth, fifth, fifth every single week that’s just wearing the stage points out, that’s wearing the top five stuff and potentially wins out. That’s going to be the guy that’s going be very hard to beat. It’s understanding those days because they’re not all going to be winning capable days, it’s just part of the game that we’re in here. Just making sure that you’re maximizing is going to be crucial.”
With Brent Crews going full-time in the 19 car this year, there were less Cup guys running with JGR this year. How different has that been for you being a veteran to help the younger guys, especially knowing that William (Sawalich) and Brent wound up not making the Chase”
“You definitely hit the nail on the head as far as me needing to step up as a leader of the organization and just try to bridge the gap for them. Because I have driven multiple variations of this race car, I have been around for a long time and I’ve figured out what makes speed and what doesn’t as far as what the driver’s capable of doing. What it has done for me is it’s challenged me to dive in even deeper into a lot of little aspects that I’ve never really gone down and a lot of avenues I’ve never gone down before. But it’s helping me become even a better driver. I think that it’s actually been nice to be thrown into this situation a little bit, because I’m starting to get into, well, how do you control the way that the front end kind of compresses at tracks, and what am I doing inside the car that affects the way that the car handles? And I can take that back and I can help our drivers as well with some of that stuff. But what’s really helping is trying to help these crew chiefs understand what our cars are doing right and what they need to do a little bit better. It’s one of those things. I remember the first time I ever drove one, I didn’t know. I’m like, “I don’t know what the thing’s supposed to drive like,” you know? I’m like, “Hopefully the Cup guys have got them dialed in for us and I can just sit in there and take off.” But roles have reversed. I’m the guy now trying to get the cars right for all the younger drivers. It’s always used to help a bunch when, first person comes to mind, Kyle Busch. He used to come run the cars at Joe Gibbs Racing at the O’Reilly Series a bunch and he would constantly win in them and be like, “Well, it looks like y’all need to continue to work on yourselves because the cars are capable of winning.” It was nice to always to get a baseline from those Cup guys about coming to drive them. But when you have them come back to the series and they don’t win very much, it’s like, okay, yeah, lean on that guy. ‘Why, why are, why can’t they win, you know? What was the problem in the race?’ They do help bridge that gap quite a bit and I feel like I’m starting to get to that point where I’m now doing the same thing.”
You’ve had so much success at Darlington, is it the perfect place to start the playoffs for you?
“It’s certainly nice to kick it off with a track that you know how to win at. I do a great job in my opinion of making these notebooks and building these experiences and taking mental and physical notes of what I did right and what I did wrong. So, any time you go to a track that you finally start finding success at, those are very important because you have to sit down and dissect them very in-depth about what are the things that I did do right at it? What are the things that maybe somebody got the best of me at some point in the race? Why did it happen? I’ve got a good rhythm of that at Darlington right now. And my biggest competition there is going to be Justin Allgaier. He’s been really good at Darlington, but we’ve been right there at it as well. We’ve got multiple wins there and we’ve beat multiple Cup drivers there. It’s a lot of confidence there for myself. And so it’s cool to kick off the Chase with a track that I know so well and have so much confidence at. And it’s also one of those tracks that I remembered coming to the first few times, man, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what line to run. I didn’t know what lift points, it just seemed so intimidating. And I know a lot of people have to be in that same boat entering this. This is the time where the momentum hopefully flips and you start to kind of get into that rhythm of, “All right, I’m going to have a great week and the guys that you’re fighting are going start having bad weeks. You’re watching those points constantly, right, throughout the weeks. And if people start having bad days, that’s where the mistakes are going to start coming from. It’s important to go ahead and get your season turned around here and start acting like you’re racing for a championship right off the bat.”
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