Erik Jones 1-on-1: On Darlington prowess, coming back from injury and pending fatherhood

Erik Jones has two career Cup wins in the Southern 500, having captured the marquee event in 2019 and 2022.

His 2019 win locked him in the playoffs, although he would have made it that year on points. His win in 2022 was in a playoff opener when he wasn’t in the playoffs but was a huge win for the Petty GMS Racing team.

A win in 2024 would likely rank even bigger as it would lock him into the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs in a year when he sits 26th in the standings. He missed two races because of a broken back suffered at Talladega, but he still wouldn’t be in contention to make it on points even if he finished second in the races he missed.

The Legacy Motor Club driver, who recently signed a contract extension to remain with the team, talked with FOX Sports about the season and trying to race his way into the playoffs Sunday night.

Trying to win to get in, there probably aren’t too many other places that you’d rather have that shot?

You take the superspeedways out of the question, if I had to pick one track, Darlington is probably high on that list. I enjoy it a lot, obviously have had success there in the Cup Series, and I’ve always run well there regardless. It’s a great opportunity to try to go and win our way in. The 500 has been a good race for me. It’s very different from the [400-mile] spring race with the way the track changes through the night, the way the race kind of plays out, that extra distance adds a little bit in as well. I love racing at Darlington, and it’s definitely always been one of my favorite tracks.

Had the extension not been done before then, would there be any additional angst if it wasn’t done?

Maybe some at this point. It’s obviously getting late in the year. We’re at the point now, you’d like to have things done or know that they’re not going to be done. I definitely would have probably a little bit more [angst] at that point to go out and perform. I felt pretty good about getting things done again with Legacy beforehand and what we’ve been building over the last two years. But it’s definitely just nice to have it out of the way. You don’t have to mess with it for a little while now. It’s never fun, at least not for me. I don’t know if some people enjoy it, but I’ve never been a big fan of trying to go through all the negotiations. It’s never a super fun thing. 

There was talk that with Truex retiring, that potentially you could go back to Joe Gibbs Racing. And then I think that kind of sprouted into a wondering if you are unhappy at Legacy. Did you feel like things got misconstrued or your will to be there was challenged?

Yeah, I think things got probably taken out of context a bit. I wouldn’t say I’m unhappy at Legacy. That’s probably the wrong way to word it. Are we unhappy with our performance currently? Yeah, I think everybody would agree with that at our team. So definitely not unhappy at Legacy and with our group. I’ve been with the same 43 group for four years now and enjoy working with those guys and enjoy going to the track with them and trying to get better. But we’re working hard right now just to get our cars better, get our performance where we want it to be. But definitely was all good with being a Legacy for a while.

How would you characterize the season? You’ve not only had the change to Toyota and frustrating performance, but you also had the injury?

Tough year in a lot of ways, right? Obviously, the start of the year, things were OK. And then we had the injury at Talladega and had to sit out a couple of weeks, and that was frustrating. As a driver, it’s just not fun to sit out and have to sit and watch. I’m fortunate it went quick and healed up quick and got [back] in quick. But, obviously, the last four months after that have been challenging, probably some of the more challenging of my career. We’re working hard trying to get things better. Nobody involved wants to run bad. We want to be running up front and contending for wins. And so we’re going to work hard to make it happen. Toyota is working hard to help us get there as much as they can. Some of it’s just going to take time. We’ve got people coming in to help make a difference, and it’s just going to take some time to get there.

Do you feel missing the races impacted you, either kind of performance wise, just from missing races, or with the change in manufacturer, just losing that time on the track, or physically being kind of beaten down?

Probably a little of each. Physically, I felt good when I got back in. I was probably 98 percent. There was still a little bit in me of I was just a little worn out. Obviously, your body is going through a lot to heal up through an injury like that. That took some out of me. It was harder being out of the car for two weeks on a performance level than I thought. I really thought hopping back in at Darlington wouldn’t be a big deal at all, but it was weird sitting out for a couple of weeks and then getting back in. I felt like I was a tick behind. So that was pretty interesting for me. And then obviously going through this transition in manufacturer has been challenging, just trying to figure everything out and kind of sitting on the … you’re not totally on the back burner. I still was involved with everything that was going on with the team, but not truly being in it day to day, and with [crew chief] Dave [Elenz] and talking about the car and working through sim, it made it — we just lost two and a half weeks through it. And then I had to switch a lot of stuff around in the car, which was, again, more challenging than I thought it would be. So there’s a lot of challenges that came with that that I didn’t really think about beforehand or even immediately after.

Do you have a good seat and everything now that you’re happy with … 

I do now. There was nothing that was necessarily …

… like a good seating position and interior just overall?

I just learned a lot through it. I had ran the same seat and set up, everything since my really my rookie year in Cup. I had some hard wrecks and never had an issue. So I didn’t think much of it, but learned a lot through it. Just mainly my seating position was bad. I was a pretty big sloucher in the car, which makes sense now, if you think about it and how your back kind of positions when you’re slouched, you lose a lot of space in there through your discs and your vertebrae. But it was good in a way, as much as I learned about it, I think I helped definitely myself and hopefully some other guys in the garage, too.

Can it help at all with patience? How good are you being patient, knowing that the learning and the chemistry is going to continue, probably for another 12 months?

I’m a patient guy, and I feel like I’m a loyal guy too. I’m loyal to my people, and I want to stick it out and make things work. I don’t really want to be the guy that bails out when things are bad or have that kind of reputation. I have a pretty good sense of patience to sticking things through. I have a pretty good sense of how the car side works, kind of where we’re at currently, and what we are working on to get better. I’ve been diving in and trying to stay up to date as much as I can on that. It is going to take time. We’ve got people coming in. Some of them have started now. Some of them are not going to start until later on. But even then, they’ve got to get brought up to speed to where we are currently and start to dive in on how to make that better. So it’s definitely a time-consuming process, more time-consuming than anybody would like it to be. But we are putting the people in place to make it better.

And speaking of patience, baby coming in November?

Yeah, so that will add to the patience.

What are you potentially looking forward the most? Or what are you anticipating a baby changing your life the most?

I’m looking forward to the most that it’s in the offseason so I’ve got two months to kind of get used to things or a month and a half through that. So that’s nice. Timing worked out really good. Some guys aren’t so lucky with how the timing works out. That’s really nice. Obviously, I don’t have any kids, so I don’t know what to expect or how I’m going to feel. I’m excited about it, but how I’m going to feel when he’s here and born? I’ve talked to my mom about it, how she felt about when I was born and the emotions she had, but I’m really getting to experience it for the first time. My best friend just had a kid two months ago, so I’ve talked to him a lot about how that’s all went, and he’s given me some good advice and updates on the sleepless nights to start out. But it’s gotten a lot better for him in a couple of months. I’m trying to dive in. [My wife] Holly bought me a book I’m supposed to read on being being a dad, that I still haven’t read. But I’m going to here before the next couple months go by, so hopefully that’ll give me some insight.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.

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