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After leading the NASCAR XFINITY Series point standings for most of the season, Erik Jones now finds himself ninth in the point standings after the first race in the series’ inaugural Chase and outside the cutoff of the top-eight Chase qualifiers to advance to the next round. Jones is just three points behind Blake Koch on the cutoff line after a late wreck at Kentucky relegated him to a 28th-place finish, The good news is that Jones will have two chances to advance his position before this round ends at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Friday, October 7th.
Starting with the Drive Sober 200 at Dover International Speedway on Saturday, October 1st, Jones and his No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing team have some confidence because of their win earlier this season at the same track. Jones has enjoyed his season up to this point and knows he has a team that can deliver.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s been fun so far,” says Jones. “Obviously, only one race in and not the finish we wanted but had a really fast car and had one that could’ve won the race, but ended up being our own biggest enemy in that one. “Hopefully can get it back on track here at Dover — another really good race track for us. One where we did get a win here earlier this year so I think it’s a track where we can hopefully repeat and grab another win, but in all honesty I think we’re only three points out of the cutoff right now. So, as long as we run top-ten here in the next two weeks we’ll be just fine. It’s not always as easy as it sounds so we need to go out, do our job and execute correctly.”
The challenge for Jones is finding the right balance of what they can control by minimizing mistakes over what is out of their control and how they deal with the potential.
“Well, it’s a fine line,” admits Jones. “You’ve got to control what you can control and at Kentucky I didn’t do a very good job of that and what I can control and put myself in a situation to make a mistake and ended up doing that and taking ourselves out. So, that’s not something we want to do this weekend and obviously if we can avoid that we need to. If we’re caught up in something and it’s something out of our control that’s nothing we can do about that. We still need to put ourselves in a good position and one where we’re running upfront and hopefully in the mix for a win and if we can do that I think we’ll be just fine.”
So with the first race of the XFINITY Series Chase in the rearview mirror, Jones hasn’t seen anything surprising yet and feels those who have been his toughest competitors so far will remain so throughout the Chase.
“I think we were exceptionally fast last weekend and didn’t really capitalize on it,” adds Jones. “Nobody really stood out. I guess the only thing that surprised me was that Elliott (Sadler) ended up winning that race. He said himself he wasn’t very good that weekend and then they ended up in position to win so that was neat for them. I think the contenders were the same that you’ve seen over the last month or so. We were fast, Daniel (Suarez) was fast, the JR Motorsports cars were pretty good all night. And, I think we’ll be the same kind of field all the way until the end of the year depending on who makes it through the rounds and how the races play out. Nothing really stood out as being too surprising to me at Kentucky.”
There are a few other drivers that may challenge Jones on Saturday. Darrell Wallace Jr. finished runner-up at Dover in the spring and is looking to get his first career XFINITY Series win. In four Dover starts, he’s registered two poles and an average finish of 10.5.
Also, NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, Austin Dillon and Matt DiBenedetto are competing in Saturday’s race.
As a Chase favorite, fans can watch Jones race to get back into the top-eight drivers in the standings. He wants a strong rebound on Saturday and with a win this past spring at Dover, Jones has a chance of repeating with a victory this weekend.
Watch the Drive Sober 200 on NBC Sports Network at 3 pm ET on Saturday, October 1st.