FONTANA, Calif.: Erik Jones wasn’t sure if he would be able to carry the speed of his Petty GMS Motorsports Chevrolet from practice to qualifying – but when the checkered flag flew in Sunday’s Wise Power 400 at Auto Club (Calif.) Speedway – Jones was right where he started – up front.
Jones aboard his No. 43 Focus Factor Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for legendary team owner Richard Petty and new partner Maury Gallagher led the second race of the season six times for a total of 18 laps – but throughout a 400-mile race that saw plenty of attrition, spins and craziness – Jones was able to persevere and keep his race car inside the top-10 for a majority of the race.
A late race restart with four laps to go provided the opportunity for Jones to challenge for the race lead from fifth and utilizing the high lane on the restart, Jones was able to work up to third in the clutches of leader Kyle Larson and Daniel Suarez – but over the final two laps of the race, the insanely wide Auto Club Speedway provided several lanes of racing which allowed Austin Dillon and Joey Logano to challenge Jones.
Coming to the white flag, Jones made a dive-bomb move on the apron of the race track that allowed him to capture third from Suarez and try to catch Dillon and Larson for the race win.
A gallant effort by Jones over the final two miles of the race allowed him to significantly close the gap on Dillon and Larson but finished third, 0.445-seconds behind Larson.
“It was good,” said Jones after the race. “It feels good to be interviewed after the race, too. It’s awesome, but it’s frustrating too. You’re that close and you have a car that you feel like can do it. The No. 43 FOCUSfactor Chevrolet definitely had it today. It was a matter of getting up front and taking advantage of clean air, and we did that a couple of times.”
Jones admitted that he struggled with restarts and says there are rooms for improvement moving forward from the cockpit.
“A couple restarts just didn’t go our way,” added Jones. “I probably could have done a better job here and there, and it just didn’t add up. I just haven’t raced up front a lot in the last year and a half. There are some things I need to be better at. Hopefully I have a lot of time to work on that. We want to keep running up front and if we keep doing that, we’re going to win some races.”
Jones performance on Sunday was the first top-five finish by a car owned by Richard Petty not accomplished on a superspeedway since Darrell Wallace Jr. finished third at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2019. Before that – Aric Almirola finished fifth at Dover Motor Speedway in 2015.
And with the mega merger during the offseason with the addition of Maury Gallagher and the GMS nameplate to the team’s fold, some were skeptical on how long it would take to see results from either the No. 42 team driven by Ty Dillon or from the No. 43 of Jones.
The questions were answered from Jones’ team on Sunday and he is optimistic the team can keep pedaling in the right direction.
“I’m really proud of this whole group,” sounded Jones. “It’s been a big off season with the merger and everything we’ve done, so this is a very satisfying run for everybody and I just hope we can keep going.”
After finishing 29th at Daytona – Jones leaves Southern California sixth in the Cup Series points headed to Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway on March 6 – looking to duplicate his top-10 performance at the 1.5-mile speedway from 2021.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01
