By David Morgan, Associate Editor
SPEEDWAY, Ind. – Erik Jones comes into Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway as the first driver on the outside of the Chase standings looking in, currently sitting 17th on the board with five races remaining in the regular season.
If there was a place for Jones and his No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team to gain ground and make up some of the 33-point deficit to the cut off line, Indianapolis is the place to do it.
After a solid run in practice on Friday, timing in fourth fastest among a gaggle of Toyotas, Jones will now look to parlay the performance gains that Legacy has shown this year into a good run on Sunday to position himself at making a run to the postseason between now and the end of August when the regular season ends.
“I think we feel good,” said Jones. “I mean, Indy’s tough. Everything’s just got to go right. We’ve got to qualify well today. And then we got to have a mistake-free day [Sunday], whether that’s on strategy, my end, good restarts, good pit stops. Everything’s got to go so well [Sunday] to have a successful day and a good day.
“But we have the speed, so that’s checkbox number one. Without that speed, you’re not going to have any opportunity for it. So, we’ve got that going. We just got to execute now from here in a little bit in qualifying and do it [Sunday] in the race.”
Jones added that with track position being such a crucial element of racing at Indianapolis, qualifying well will be a key to being able to be in contention on race day.
“It’s huge. It’s tough if you’re starting further back than 10th and 12th,” Jones said. “We saw it last year with Denny. He probably had the best car and he had to start in the back and just never could quite recover from it in the whole race.
“And so, it’s not a day ender to have to start deep, but it definitely makes your day really tough. And I would say the guys who are going to contend for the win tomorrow are probably going to start up towards the top 10 or 12 in the field.”
Jones will start just outside his top-12 threshold in 13th for Sunday’s Brickyard 400.
In this race a year ago, Jones qualified third and was having a decent run on the day before losing his right front tire near the midway point in the race, relegating him to a 36th place finish. But Jones still remains confident that Indianapolis could be a place for his team to capitalize.
“I mean, I’m always confident coming here,” said Jones. “It’s been a track I’ve run well. I’ve never got the results. I’ve had a lot of just wrecks and mechanical issues and stuff that’s went wrong. Just been one of those places where things haven’t lined up other than that one year, we ran second and everything went okay that day and we had a good run.
“So yeah, I hope we have just a smooth day. I hope we qualify well this afternoon. And then tomorrow just, I feel like our group from all sides has done a good job just maximizing our day and doing the best we can and taking what the car’s given us that day.
“And it seems like we have top five speed right now, top 10 speed for sure. And if we can execute a little bit better beyond that, I think you get some more positioning on it. But yeah, it’s a track I’ve always felt good at. I always have confidence coming here.”
Should he and the No. 43 team be able to make up ground on the Chase cut line, the tough part comes next with a string of short tracks coming up with Iowa, Richmond, and New Hampshire before the regular season finale at Daytona.
“We’ve just got to have a great day here [Sunday] and hopefully gain a bunch of points to get it back at least closer to even and then survive from there,” said Jones. “We’ve already put a ton of work into Iowa trying to get that better, trying to work on our short track program. So just need to get through this weekend though and get it somewhat close back to even.”
Jones added that the short tracks are a concern in the No. 43 camp, especially after last weekend at North Wilkesboro, but the team is hoping to get things pointed back in the right direction for those races.
“It’s top of the list. I mean, the intermediate stuff for us I feel like is pretty shored up. We had great speed [Friday], but it’s definitely, it’s not at the short track stuff,” said Jones.
“Wilkesboro, it wasn’t great. We really missed the balance. And Iowa, we’re just not totally sure. We’re going with a lot of different package on what we took to Wilkesboro, but the concern definitely is still there after Wilkesboro. It didn’t go how we needed. So, it’s top of our priority list right now.”
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