LONG POND, Pa. — Erik Jones’ second straight third-place finish and his fifth of the season seemed to get lost amid his mid-race contact with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. last weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
That was, in part, due to Stenhouse firing off in a post-incident interview, saying: “The 20 just ran over us there. He’s gotten me a couple times now. He’ll have one coming at some point when he’s trying to make the playoffs.”
Those words were certainly pointed, but Jones indicated that there’s no lingering animosity between the Roush Fenway Racing driver and him following a mid-week chat with the Mississippi native.
“I saw Ricky this week and talked to him,” Jones told NASCAR.com on Saturday at Pocono Raceway, site of this weekend’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race, the Gander RV 400 (3 p.m. ET on NBCSN/NBC Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
“I feel like we’re OK. I understand why he was frustrated. I think he understands why I was frustrated at that point in the race, as well, once you go back and look at it. I think we had a good talk. Ricky and I have had a couple of run-ins at the track over the last couple of years. Unfortunately, I didn’t want to end the guy’s day, but it was kind of a racing deal and I think we both understand where we stand on that issue.”
Now the page turns to Pocono where Jones led final practice. Jones comes into this race with seven top 10s in his last 10 races and sits 28 points above the cutline in a quest to make the playoffs for the second consecutive season in the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. He’s climbed four spots in the standings in the past two races.
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The 2.5-mile Pennsylvania track is as a great opportunity for the 23-year-old to further improve his playoff standing. Among drivers in Sunday’s field, Jones holds the best average finish (9.6) and has three top fives and four top 10s in five Cup starts at the “Tricky Triangle.”
“It’s definitely a place we come to that I feel confident about and a place where we can win and contend,” Jones said. “We had a shot here the last time we were here on the last restart — just couldn’t quite get the push we needed and the run we needed to clear Kyle (Busch). I always feel good coming here. We always contend and it’s been rare that we don’t have speed and the strategy that we run usually puts us up front with an opportunity. Always exciting and definitely had it circled to come back and contend.”
In his third-place finish in June and his fifth-place result in this race last year, Jones and crew chief Chris Gayle eschewed stage points to set themselves up better to contend for the win. Their final stop in June saw Gayle get bold in taking no tires, and Jones has noticed his crew chief raising the aggressive thinking even further with the playoff push in full swing.
“New Hampshire was a great show of that for us – just taking the two tires (in Stage 1), taking no tires at the end,” Jones said. “Chris has done a good job of being confident in himself and being confident in me and the car that we can maintain on two or no tires. Pocono’s going to be another big one for that. I think you’ll see probably more aggressive calls throughout the field but I’ve definitely seen Chris step up the aggression.”
In the past two races at Kentucky and New Hampshire, Jones has scored 18 total stage points en route to back-to-back third-place finishes. Coming into those races, he had just 43 stage points on the season.
But with six races left before the 16-driver playoff field is finalized, does the calculus at Pocono – a track that tends to play out like a road course when it comes to strategy — change a bit with Jones above the provisional cutline?
“It’s a tough call,” Jones said. “If you feel like you can win the race, you’re going to have to kind of go for it — but we also need stage points. We didn’t do a good job this year really of getting stage points and these last few weeks we have.
“We’ve gotten ourselves to a more comfortable spot in the playoff picture. We still have to build that cushion and we have a chance strategy-wise to get more stage points. If we have an opportunity to finish in the top three of a stage, then I think we’d probably take that and hope that it’s going to work out and lead us back into contention in the race. If we have a shot (at the win), if we have a dominant car, we feel like then we’ll probably go for the win.”