SPARTA, Ky: Behind the wild and craziness of the epic battle for the win between brothers Kurt and Kyle Busch, Erik Jones was running quietly in third ready to pounce if the two wrecked in NASCAR overtime in Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 presented by Walmart at Kentucky Speedway.
While Kurt Busch ultimately prevailed over his younger brother for his first win of 2019, Jones made a statement that he refuses to be left out of the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoff grid without a fight with his first top-five since finishing third at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway last month.
After finishing second to Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Kyle Busch in Stage 2, Jones restarted for Stage 3 in sixth and used a long green flag run to climb back through the top half of the field while others played the strategy game.
Methodically moving forward, Jones found himself back in the top-five with 60 laps remaining despite dealing with a tight No. 20 Craftsman Toyota. By Lap 216, Jones made his final stop on pit road and cycled back into the top-five.
Marching forward with a better-balanced race car, Jones sat fifth with 10 laps to go but when a caution waved with six laps remaining, the opportunity to pit or not became the million-dollar question. Jones’ crew chief Chris Gayle kept his driver on the track for NASCAR overtime.
While chaos erupted on the restart with cars everywhere, Jones plucked his way through to finish third for his fifth top-five and ninth top-10 of the season.
After qualifying 21st and when a tight when track position proved to be critical, Jones was satisfied with the finish.
“We just didn’t have the track position (at the beginning),” offered Jones.” We qualified not where we wanted to and had to work back from that. Right from the start, I knew that the Craftsman Camry was pretty good. I felt comfortable in practice in race trim.
“Just had to work back from it and it took until the second stage to get up there and we were finally in position and got some good restarts and some good pit stops and got up in contention on the last restart. You can’t ask for much more. You want to be there and want to have a shot.
We did that. We just didn’t have quite enough car and didn’t have quite the right circumstances, but good day overall.”
Jones said he was prepared for anything in the final lap of the race.
“Yeah, I had two choices there going into 3 and 4. I knew they were probably going to slide up, so I was going to try to run to the bottom and make a run on them, but they didn’t slide up enough, and I was tight and couldn’t quite get the run I needed to.
“But the Craftsman Camry was good. It was fast from the start. We just needed some track position. We needed to get up there and finally did and had a shot, we were just a little too tight at the end.”
Heading to New Hampshire, Jones is 16th in points, two points ahead of 17th. The Byron, Mich. native said it was important for the team to have a strong finish and collect points – but they need to continue to do that.
“Lots of points which is what we needed,” he added. “I’d love to be standing there on the frontstretch where Kurt (Busch) is, but we’re close and we’re just going to keep after it and get there soon.
Well, it’s good that we’re ahead of it now and we just need to keep it going. We built ourselves big deficit through some misfortune and bad luck, and we’re digging out of it now but we’re doing a good job at it and doing the best we can.
Getting back on the good side of it’s a good start, we just need to keep it rolling and hopefully get a win here soon.”
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
