RELATED: Detailing Jones' season to date | Playoff bubble watch
RICHMOND, Va. -- As the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series regular season wraps with Saturday night's Federated Auto Parts 400 (7:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) at Richmond Raceway, Erik Jones is among the hottest drivers in the series. The only thing he is missing is a win. Oh, he came close at a different type of short-track race at Bristol Motor Speedway last month, but the runner-up effort with 260 laps led did simply made Jones hungrier to get to Victory Lane. A victory at Richmond would launch the Sunoco Rookie of the Year candidate into the sport’s playoff as one of 16 drivers battling for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup. He will line up 10th in the race. The driver of the No. 77 Furniture Row Racing Toyota is in a win-or-no-playoffs situation, and that has not brought him added stress coming into the race weekend. "I've honestly felt just really locked in all week," Jones said during a media availability at Richmond on Friday. "I've felt like I've just been really excited to get here and get on track and get qualifying done and get the race going. … I'm sure once the race rolls around here tomorrow night the nerves will be high and we'll be itching to go and get things out of the way. "I think as a team we're trying not to put too much more pressure on ourselves and just do what we've done here for the last month, and that's just run well and be fast and run up front. We just need to keep running the way we've been running, and that win is going to come." The weekend didn't get off to the greatest start for Jones, who had a 60-minute hold for the 85-minute practice session due to failing pre-qualifying tech and pre-race tech at Darlington three times in each instance. While Jones said "it is always a bummer not to get out there and get track time, I don't think it’s going to make a huge difference." RELATED: Truex wins regular season title As we've gotten deeper into the 2017 season, Jones has made an impression on Furniture Row Racing teammate Martin Truex Jr., who offered praise for the Michigan native earlier in the day. "They've been fast all year and now they are starting to put together the results," said Truex, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series 2017 Regular Season Champion. "It's fun to see. Erik's doing an awesome job and he's a great kid, so it's been fun to see it."The way that Jones has been running of late sees the 21-year-old come into this race with five straight top 10s and three straight top-five finishes. In the past five races, only Kyle Busch has a better average finish (4.2), while Denny Hamlin has equaled Jones’ mark of 5.6.
That is one heck of a counter to the three finishes of 33rd-or-worse he had in the season's first 10 races – one of which was the spring race at Richmond where he exited after four laps due to a crash and finished last in the 38-car field.
"To have it really all come around and come full circle at this point in the year and be getting finishes where I feel like we are capable of, yeah, it's hugely rewarding,” Jones said. "It's huge for the team. It's huge for everybody's confidence, and it just gives us a lot of momentum week in and week out. We feel like we can run right up front with the best of them. There's a lot of times where I feel like at the beginning of the year we were getting runs taken away from us, but now, like I said, it's coming around. "It's been really rewarding to just stick with it all year and keep after it and keep plugging away to try to get these runs."