How consistency put Erik Jones in NASCAR Chase contention

Erik Jones is best known for his Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway amid a grinding NASCAR Cup Series career. It was at that track in 2017 where legendary announcer Ken Squier dubbed him “That Jones Boy.”

Nine years later, Jones is right in the thick of the battle to make NASCAR’s new-look Chase. And he’s making the case for a different nickname.

Mr. Consistency.

It was a slow start to the year for Jones and the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team. And while the group has hit its stride as the season’s stretch run begins, they’ve still largely been unflashy.

Yet there the Michigander sits, 14th in the standings and in contention for his first postseason berth in seven years.

The key to this unexpected success? Reaching the finish line while so many of his rivals falter.

“I feel like it’s been a clean year,” Jones said of his season to date in a media availability session at Sonoma Raceway. “We haven’t made a lot of mistakes on either end, and in the times that we have, we’ve been able to clean it up and salvage a day out of it.

“I’m proud of that, for sure. I think it’s something to be proud of, and it’s shown here in our points position. Hopefully we can just keep that going a bit longer.”

By the end of April, Jones had largely fallen by the wayside when it came to playoff discussions. His 10th full-time season had begun with just two top-10s in the year’s opening 10 races – a pair of 10th-place runs in Las Vegas and Darlington – and Jones found himself 25th in the standings with many veteran stars ahead.

That sits right in line with where Jones has ended the year in the standings (27th, 28th and 24th) over recent seasons, so there was little reason to expect a big leap forward. But the No. 43 team quietly reached another gear over the late spring.

The uptick started as early as the first race of May at Texas Motor Speedway, when Jones quietly came home 12th. He’s never been a road course ace, but Jones survived Watkins Glen to salvage 19th.

From there came the run.

Over the course of the next four races, Jones had an average finish of 8.0 and turned his season around. The 30-year-old notched finishes of 13th in the Coca-Cola 600 and 11th at Nashville Superspeedway. A week later, he came home a strong second in his home race at Michigan International Speedway. His team followed that up with a sixth-place result at Pocono Raceway.

None of the finishes outside of Michigan drew major buzz, but the collective results were enough to lift Jones from 25th to 15th in the standings. And with the aid of a shocking Shane van Gisbergen DNF and a quiet top-20, Jones rose another spot to 14th in San Diego.

When he left Watkins Glen in May, Jones sat 69 points below the provisional Chase cutoff. Five races later, he finds himself 10 points above it, all thanks to a solid run of form and consistent maximization of his team’s opportunities while those around him struggle.

“I think you’ve seen the last month, just with our group, we’ve had some good days in there, but we’ve not had any real bad ones,” Jones said. “That’s what’s kind of leap-frogged us here in points, pretty far up the standings so far.

“A lot of guys have just had bad days. Shane [van Gisbergen] last week, getting wrecked in San Diego. [Ryan] Preece having a few bad weeks. The guys that we’re racing around have had struggles.

“For me it’s, I think, a mentality thing. I feel like I’ve been in a good spot of being able to take what I can get on whatever day it is. Whether that’s a day like Michigan, contending for the win, or a day like San Diego just trying to run top-20, we’re just taking what we can get and making the most of it.”

Sonoma Raceway is bound to bring another challenge to Jones this weekend. He crashed in practice and qualified a distant 32nd. His goal for Sunday is a clean top-15 and a few extra points along the way if the right opportunity opens up.

“I would say if we can steal some stage points, that’d be great,” he said. “[If] some of these guys are flipping the stage and we could stay out and grab some points, that’d be awesome.

“If we could come home with that and a top-15, I think that’d be great.”

Those ambitions may play out. Starting as deep as he is in the field, they also might not.

Either way, you can count on the No. 43 team to dig deep and claw out as many points as they can. Jones has shown they can do so consistently over the past two months.