SPARTA, Ky. — Erik Jones had the best view from his office Friday night at Kentucky Speedway, leading in the closing stages, with only the pace car in front of him during a late caution period and with another NASCAR XFINITY Series win in sight.
But the equivalent of knocking over a pencil holder or a box of paper clips spoiled both the office feng shui inside his car and his shot at a victory in the Alsco 300.
While making adjustments inside the cockpit during the fourth of the race’s five yellow flags, Jones accidentally hit the ignition kill switch, causing his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 20 Toyota to stall. NASCAR competition officials ruled that Jones failed to keep pace during his flight fade, forcing him to line up third on the next-to-last restart on Lap 180 of 201 laps.
“I don’t know. I fell back 20 feet from the pace car, no different than if you’re saving fuel and they put me to third place, so I guess I gave it away,” Jones said after finishing fourth in the 40-car field. “It’s unfortunate. Good Reser’s Camry and nothing to show for it.”
Jones, who led three laps, explained that his late-race gaffe wasn’t a matter of purposely turning the car off and on to save fuel.
“There’s a lot of things obviously these drivers do in these car that the general fan doesn’t realize,” said Chris Gabehart, crew chief for Jones’ JGR No. 20. “They’re just as busy or busier under caution trying to manage a lot of things, and that’s what Erik was doing. Moving from one switch to the other, he just accidentally hit the ignition switch and turned it off, and it only takes a few seconds before you can’t maintain speed and that’s all.”
Jones’ frustration as he emerged from the car was evident late Friday night, but Gabehart said the miscue wasn’t solely the responsibility of the driver, who is still in his first full season of XFINITY Series competition.
“No one puts more pressure on him than he does on himself, like any great athlete or performer would,” Gabehart said. “It’s no different with him. But he’s just 20. He’s still making mistakes every day for the first time like we all are, but when you’re younger, you make a lot more of them in a day and you’ve got to learn from them.
“Just a simple mistake, but we made the mistake. That’s what I want to stress is, it’s not Erik we’re talking about. Just like it wasn’t my team we were talking about last week at Daytona or at Iowa, it’s us as a race team no matter what, and that’s the biggest lesson I want him to take from this. And he will. He’s a smart kid.”
Jones said he was able to salvage some consolation from his ninth top-five effort of the year, the most of any full-time XFINITY Series driver so far this season. The Michigan native sits fourth in the standings heading to the series’ next race, scheduled next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
“I mean, we had some good moments, we had a good race car, and it was a good team-building day for us,” Jones said. “A lot of good changes, a lot of good gains and it’s a pretty good run for a repave. Just unfortunate it didn’t work out. I felt like we did have the fastest car here once we got out front, but it’s just hard to get back up there once you get back in traffic, so not our night.”