TOYOTA RACING – Erik Jones
NASCAR Cup Series Quotes

KANSAS CITY (Sept. 27, 2026) – LEGACY MOTOR CLUB driver Erik Jones and team President Michael Gutilla were made available to the media on Sunday morning prior to the NASCAR Cup Series race from Kansas Speedway, with the team announcing a contract extension with Jones.

ERIK JONES, No. 43 AdventHealth Toyota Camry XSE, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB:

MICHAEL GUTILLA, President, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB

You are here to today to announce some exciting news. Can you tell us about it?

JONES: “We finalized a contract extension for myself for multiple years. 
We got it done a little ways back, but we had to find the right time to get it announced to everybody. So, I don’t think it was a surprise to either side, something that came up a while back, and honestly, one of the probably easier negotiations I’ve had in my career just knowing kind of where I’m at and where the team’s at and everything came together really quickly. It was nice to get it done and focus forward from there. Happy to have it done.”

GUTILLA: “I think we’ve talked a lot about what Legacy’s goals are going forward, and with Jimmie Johnson coming on board and the current ownership structure, the team that’s put in place, we are on a five-year journey where one year into that. Erik is the cornerstone of that and has been. He’s been continuously building our program and making it stronger, until we were just really happy to be able to put a multi-year deal together that would be consistent with that time frame. And for our families, for our fans, for our hardworking employees, and our partners, we just knew this was going to be the next step. There’s such mutual trust between Erik and LMC, and what we’re building, and LMC, and Erik, and his abilities to get us where we desire to be.”

What does it mean to be associated with the 43 and the history in this sport?

JONES: I’ve been there for a long time now. I don’t know if I’m the second longest tenured driver to Richard (Petty) at this point, but I got to be getting close. That’s something cool, and for me, I’m a loyal person, and I don’t like to make changes. I like to stick with the people that I trust and have been with and think that can do a good job. To be back at the same group of people that we’ve put together over the last couple of years, it’s just something that I wanted to do, and wanted to be a part of. I’ve kind of seen the trajectory of where we went the last couple of years, and where we can go in the next five, as Michael mentioned, and it was something that I want to be a part of. I feel like I’m at a point in my career where I definitely feel as good as I’ve ever been in racing and only trying to get better from here. It’s been fun. It’s been a long journey. This is year, I think, six for me in the 43, and so it’s went by super-fast, but it’s been fun to see the changes in the growth and kind of where we’re headed.”

What do you both see with the new overall driver lineup at LEGACY starting next season?

JONES: “Relationships in racing are interesting, because at some point I feel like all of them are forced a little bit, and that’s not in a bad way. When you start to work with even a new crew chief or a new spotter you start those relationships and you agree to work together, but then you have to force each other and get to know each other. It’s no different from drivers, and I’m excited to have both of those guys in there, but I didn’t really know either of them. So just getting to know them and building those relationships, that only makes the next year easier. 
The conversation’s easier. You know, the hard conversations that you have with those guys and the mutual respect through the season of how you’re going to go about your business and your racing and everything that comes along with that. I’m excited to get to three cars more than anything. 
It’s huge for us as a company in the data point that we can achieve with one more car on the track. And having two guys, I’m not the oldest anymore at LEGACY. Josh (Berry) has five years on me, which is nice, but he’s got so much experience in racing from not only at the cup level only, but from on down to short tracks, and what he’s done, building teams and cars through there. And then Riley (Herbst) being not as young as some people would say sometimes, but he’s young in a Cup series. Just helping him grow and learn and continue to improve. We will have two great date points from Josh and myself as well, I’m leaning on and just try to learn to become the race car driver he wants to be.”

GUTILLA: “We have a driver lineup that, in calendar years, is very young. But Erik represents going into his 11th season. He’s the veteran driver of the group, and so the whole idea about what he talked about co-opetition between your drivers. How do they work with each other to make the whole stable better than the individuals. That was actually a factor in enabling us to round off our driver lineup. We kind of did these announcements in reverse order, but like Erik talked about, we had this deal done earlier on and being able to extend Eric’s deal for a multi-year contract allowed us to make the other decisions that you’ve heard in our first announcements that we rolled out. But really having Erik as the cornerstone allowed us to expand our program in that fashion.” 


How important was continuity a factor in re-signing Erik?

GUTILLA: “Continuity is important. I would characterize Erik’s part of the team as continuous improvement and stable. He and Justin Alexander (crew chief) are a great pair. This is their first season together. It will be really exciting to see them enter into their second season after going through one season together and keeping that whole team intact, which was also intentional part of a complimentary strategy to some of the changes you’ve heard lately.” 


Where do you stand with building out the three teams before cars hit the track next year in Daytona?

GUTILLA: “Fortunately, it’s not something that just hit us in the head overnight, right? We’ve had the charter now for awhile and we were able to prepare for it. We’ve really been building for that third team over the course of the last 18 months. 
And we have announcements that will be forthcoming in terms of how we’ve rounded off that team. We got some just great talent coming in from not only the crew chief perspective, which we just announced with Jeremy Bullins coming in. And also we have announcements to make, and as you know, some of these things are time blocked in terms of when you can make announcements, but we’re really pleased with the talent and the people that are both internally moving up inside of our organization. We very much pride ourselves on promoting from within, when we can do that. And it’s always good to complement that, though, with some veteran capability as well. 
So, you’ll see a mix of that coming into roundoff our third team.”

How much of a leader have you had to become internally at LEGACY MOTOR CLUB?

JONES: “I think that journey started probably six years ago. When I was out at JGR (Joe Gibbs Racing), that was a pretty well-oiled machine. I was just kind of a piece of the puzzle there. 
When I joined the 43 I think we had 30 employees maybe and we were a single car team. And so all of a sudden there was a lot more decisions that I was involved with that maybe I knew, maybe I didn’t know. Some of it was just kind of winging it and hoping for the best, that I was making the right decision with the group that I was with, and just trying to learn. I was only three years in a cup at that point, I was 23 years old. I was just trying to kind of figure things out, but as I went through this journey and gotten to work with good people more and more and surrounded by good people. That’s what it’s all about at the end of the day. I can have my opinion and be a part of that discussion. And I feel like I have been, but I’ve got to have people that are smarter than me around me to help me formulate kind of those decisions. I want to focus on racing and that’s obviously my main job at the end of the day is just to get in the car and be the best I can be. And through the week, help my team the most I can, whether that’s on the simulator or being in the shop with them and build those relationships more, I have a great group on the 43. At the end of it all, the leadership role has been higher than ever. When I joined JGR I was 20 and the next youngest guy must have been at that time, Denny, and he was older than I am today, even still. It’s definitely different. It’s not necessarily in my wheelhouse, but it’s something I’ve learned to do more and more and try to be more involved with and just more engaged in meetings, and being there, and being a part of things, as many things as I can. Just trying to grow that side of it too.”

What will be key to success for you in today’s race in Kansas?

JONES: “We got a little ways to go. We just had a stretch here that hasn’t been what we wanted, and I think we were kind of looking for that one reset, that one race where things go right for you and you’ve had it even if you have a decent car, maybe some things during the day go well, and you luck out on a couple good calls or a good caution here and something turns your day into a great one. That’s what we need. So, the lap 35 competition yellow is good for us We’re starting 30th, so we’ve got to kind of work our way forward, hopefully, and then get a break and reset and go from there. But Kansas is a place you can pass. If you got a good car you can pass. I think back to Michigan earlier this season, we started dead last and it was one of our best races of the year. If you got the car, this is a place where you can make it happen and get to the front. So we just need to get rolling, we want to finish top 20. 
We don’t want to finish in the 20s in points again. We need to have a good stretch here to the end of the year. And we’ve got some good tracks we can do it, and I feel like starting with today, with Kansas. We just have to get rolling.”

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Once the dust settled in 1926, Cyrus Avery wrote a polite thank-you letter to the federal highway official who had helped end a fight that dragged on for months. Near the end, he mentioned the U.S. 60 shields. He would, he said, “have to junk them.”

That number never went up on the road he’d pushed for. The Chicago-to-Los Angeles highway got a leftover instead — and the leftover became the most famous highway number in America. The Route 66 centennial lands on November 11, 2026, a hundred years to the day after state highway officials adopted the U.S. numbered highway system that put “66” on the map.

The birthday gets the parades. The fight over the number is the better piece of Route 66 history, and it explains why the Mother Road carries a number that broke the system’s own rules.

Why the Chicago–Los Angeles Road Was Supposed to Be 60

The 1926 plan came with a pecking order everyone grasped right away. Two-digit routes ending in zero — 20, 30, 40, 50 — were the long east-west lines, and highway boosters read a zero (or a 1) as a first-class road. Any other number felt secondary.

By that logic, 60 belonged to a straight coast-to-coast route between U.S. 50 and U.S. 70. Instead, the committee drawing the map handed it to a diagonal crescent from Chicago to Los Angeles. Three of the five committee members, Avery among them, represented states that crescent ran through. A Federal Highway Administration history of the episode calls the exception “suspicious.”

A Governor Who Read the Map

Kentucky’s governor, William J. Fields, noticed. On the new map, zero routes marched toward his state from the north and the south — and 60, which should have crossed Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, was sitting in Chicago.

On December 8, 1925, he announced that Kentucky would ignore the proposed U.S. highway numbers. “Chicago influence is written all over the map,” he said. Kentucky’s complaint came down to one line: it was the only Mississippi Valley state without a route number ending in zero.

How Did 62 Become 66?

The first compromise didn’t hold. At a meeting in Chicago in January 1926, Avery said one number running all the way from Chicago to L.A. mattered more to him than whether it was 60 or 62. The committee kept 60 on his road and offered Kentucky 62, with a swap held in reserve. When Kentucky refused, federal officials made the swap — 60 through Kentucky, 62 for Chicago to Los Angeles.

Avery, it turned out, did care. On February 10 he “strenuously objected” by telegram. B. H. Piepmeier, chief engineer of Missouri’s State Highway Commission, refused 62 and a split-number idea after it, and Kentucky rejected that one too. For weeks, nobody moved.

The Afternoon in Springfield

The way out turned up on April 30, 1926, in Springfield, Missouri. Avery met Piepmeier there, and Oklahoma’s chief highway engineer, John M. Page, spotted something nobody had claimed: the number 66 wasn’t assigned to any route. The Federal Highway Administration’s own history of the numbering fight, “From Names to Numbers,” quotes the telegram the two men sent that afternoon: “We prefer sixty six to sixty two.”

It wasn’t final yet. Kentucky signed off in July, and the whole system, U.S. 66 included, was adopted that November 11. The April telegram is why Springfield bills itself as the birthplace of Route 66. The road itself was shorter than people picture, too — in 1926 it ended in downtown Los Angeles, and the western end didn’t reach Santa Monica until 1936.

Nobody in that Springfield meeting could have guessed what the double six would turn into. It’s on neon signs, painted pavement, jacket patches and belt buckles. Biker jewelers sculpt it as well — one sterling silver Route 66 motorcycle helmet ring sets the shield on the side of a vintage helmet, with brass goggles and a cigar on the rider’s face. A number picked because it was spare now stands in for the whole open road.

Riding It in November? Check the Altitude First

A centennial ride on the actual birthday sounds right. The calendar is the catch. November 11 sits at the edge of the season when the western half of the route can turn on you, and the reason is altitude more than latitude.

Flagstaff, Arizona, right on the old road, sits at around 7,000 feet, according to the National Weather Service. Snow there doesn’t wait for deep winter: over Thanksgiving weekend in 2019, a storm left about 17 inches of snow at the NWS office in Flagstaff and caused road closures across northern Arizona.

Illustration: high-country two-lane after an early snow. Around Flagstaff, the old corridor sits near 7,000 feet.

So a rider chasing the date has two sensible plays. Ride the eastern states, where the birthday events are, or treat the Arizona high country as a morning-by-morning decision. Arizona’s 511 road-condition service and the NWS Flagstaff forecast are the two checks worth making before the kickstand goes up.

Bike choice matters more on a 2,400-mile road than on a Sunday loop. Long, straight, windy days treat a touring rig very differently from a sport bike, and Bikerringshop’s breakdown of motorcycle styles covers what each type costs to run and how it fits different riders.

How Much of the Old Road Can You Still Ride?

More than most people expect. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, after the interstates replaced it, and its segments were split among private, city, state, federal and tribal owners. In a page last updated in 2022, the National Park Service put the share still drivable at about 85% — often under other names and highway numbers.

That’s an estimate, not a promise for every stretch. Some of it survives in odd forms: in Wheeler County, Texas, 1931 concrete handed to the state in 1968 still carries traffic as I-40 frontage road. A current route guide beats a vintage map.

Where the 100th Birthday Party Actually Is

For the 100th anniversary itself, two cities have the day nailed down. In Tulsa, where Avery lived, the November 11 schedule presented by the Oklahoma Route 66 Centennial Commission and Cherokee Nation Businesses opens with the Veterans Day parade downtown at 11 a.m. A free “Centennial Crawl” covers eight downtown venues in the afternoon, and “The Centennial Moment” happens on Main Street at 5 p.m. A free Bob Wills’ Texas Playboys show on Guthrie Green follows at 6.

Illustration: a main street lit up for the night. Centennial events are being staged town by town along the old road.

Springfield, Illinois, is going louder. The Illinois Route 66 Scenic Byway holds its statewide conference at Route 66 Motorheads during the day, and Starship featuring Mickey Thomas headlines a centennial concert there that night.

Congress created a federal Route 66 Centennial Commission back in December 2020. One thing the road still isn’t: a National Historic Trail. A Senate bill to designate it, S. 2887, was reported out of committee on September 17, 2026, but it hasn’t passed Congress. Event schedules shift as well, so check each organizer’s page the week you travel.

Route 66 Centennial Questions

When is the Route 66 centennial?

November 11, 2026. On that date in 1926, the American Association of State Highway Officials adopted the U.S. numbered highway system, which included U.S. 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles. Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Springfield, Illinois, both have events scheduled on the day itself.

Why is it called Route 66 and not Route 60?

Planners first gave the Chicago–Los Angeles road the number 60. Kentucky objected because it had no route ending in zero, so officials proposed 62 instead, which Oklahoma and Missouri rejected. On April 30, 1926, Oklahoma engineer John M. Page noticed 66 was unused, and the states asked for it.

Is Route 66 a National Historic Trail?

Not yet. Senate bill S. 2887 would designate the U.S. 66 alignments used between 1926 and 1985 as a National Historic Trail. It was reported out of committee on September 17, 2026, but it still has to pass Congress and be signed before the designation exists.

Can you still drive the whole route?

Mostly. The National Park Service estimates about 85% of old Route 66 segments are still drivable, many under different names or highway numbers. Gaps and detours exist, so a modern route guide matters — and in late autumn, check the mountain weather around Flagstaff before committing.

Route 66 was nobody’s first choice. It was the number left on the table after a governor, a few state highway men and a federal bureau ran out of better ideas. A century later, it’s the one people sculpt, frame and cross the country to drive.

If you ride it for the birthday, go for the history as much as the date. The weather in Flagstaff won’t care that it’s a centennial.

Author bio: Tepparit Kacha spends his working days around motorcycle jewelry and the Americana it borrows from — road signs, engine parts, old helmet shapes. He has curated sterling silver pieces for over a decade at Bikerringshop.