HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Erik Jones battled back from a car that was so ill-handling in the first half of Saturday’s Ford EcoBoost 300 that he asked over the radio why it was so slow to ultimately have a shot at winning the NASCAR XFINITY Series championship in the final laps.
Jones took the lead for the first time all night with 44 laps to go after running as low as 15th at one point in the race, passing Justin Allgaier with what was at the time the fastest car on the race track.
However, a caution two laps later for debris shuffled Jones back to third in points on pit road and the 20-year-old Byron, Michigan native spent the final stages at Homestead-Miami Speedway trying to recover.
Jones fought past Allgaier for the runner-up position with 20 laps to go when the JR Motorsports driver tagged the outside wall, closing twice to within a car length of Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Daniel Suarez for the lead and the championship before the caution came out at the 10 to go mark for a spinning Ray Black Jr.
That meant a final round of pit stops, one that left two hurdles in Jones’ way that he could not ultimately overcome.
The first was the fact that Jones had no sticker tires left in the pit area, meaning he was forced onto a set of six-lap scuffs for the final sprint to the finish.
The second was Cole Whitt’s TriStar Motorsports Toyota, which stayed out under the last caution and assumed the race lead for a three-lap dash to the finish. Whitt chose the outside lane for the restart, lining up directly in front of Jones.
When Whitt spun his tires on the restart and bogged down the outside lane, Jones saw his championship hopes evaporate, as he freefell on the top side of the race track and faded to ninth at the checkered flag.
Jones finished fourth in the final points standings, while Suarez celebrated on the frontstretch stage after winning the race.
“I thought the No. 14 was at least going to attempt to go, but he just kind of sat there and didn’t even attempt to go,” Jones said of his view on the last restart. “It’s pretty unfortunate that there really wasn’t a whole lot of respect for guys racing for the championship (given in that situation).”
“I thought we were in an okay spot, to where if he got up to speed, we would have been able to go up to the top and make something happen. We never got that chance and by the time we went into turn 1, we were in eighth place. It is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it now. It’s just unfortunate.”
Last year’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion was looking to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win the Truck and XFINITY titles in back-to-back season, but for Jones, it simply wasn’t meant to be.
“We gave a valiant effort. Once the sun went down and the track cooled down, we started to get better and better. The top really started to come together at both ends and I felt like at that point, I felt like we were able to rim ride better than anybody else.”
“I knew we weren’t in a great spot when we had to put on scuffs. It just didn’t work out. It was just one of those deals and it didn’t play into our hand.”
Jones was trying to win the championship to honor his late father Dave, who the young gun said was “on his mind” all race long.
“I was hoping to bring it home for him … and we took the lead there at one point, which was pretty cool. I would have liked to have gotten back-to-back championships, but it just didn’t play out this year. There’s always next year, so we have to move on and get better.”
With a fourth-place points finish in hand in his only full-time XFINITY championship run, Jones now looks ahead to next season, when he will compete as a rookie at the Sprint Cup level with Furniture Row Racing.
But Saturday night’s end to the season was a bittersweet finale that no doubt left both driver and team wondering “what might have been,” just as they did so many times down the stretch run to the end.
About the Writer
Jacob Seelman is the Managing Editor of Race Chaser Online and creator of the Motorsports Madness radio show, airing at 7 p.m. Eastern every Monday on the Performance Motorsports Network.
Seelman grew up in the sport, watching his grandparents co-own the RaDiUs Motorsports NASCAR Cup Series team in the 1990s.
The 22-year-old is currently studying Broadcast Journalism at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., and is also serving as both the full-time tour announcer for the Must See Racing Sprint Car Series and the co-track announcer at Millbridge Speedway.
Email Jacob at: [email protected]
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