LONG POND, Pa. — The quickest way to forget about a bad weekend is to rebound with a really good weekend. That adage played to form for Erik Jones and the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota team in Sunday’s Pocono 400.
Coming off a 40th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600, Jones used a combination of speed and strategy to score a third-place finish at Pocono for his third top five in five starts at the 2.5-mile track. The result was also his third top-six finish in the last four races.
RELATED: Race results | Kyle Busch prevails at Pocono
“Anytime you have a bad week you want to come back and rebound well and the only way you can rebound much better than we did is winning,” Jones said. “I feel like our year has been just a weird year. We’ve had probably some of the fastest cars I’ve had any year and we just haven’t been able to capitalize. Weird things happen. Things not going our way.
“We need days like today and to keep that momentum going. Running in the top five, wins are going to fall your way eventually. We just need to keep putting ourselves up there.”
The day was nearly much more for Jones, who lined up next to eventual race winner and teammate Kyle Busch for the final restart on Lap 152. Restarts had been wild all day at Pocono and the need for a good push was crucial at that late stage of the race.
“I was just hoping we were going to get a good push,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, the 14 got split there and put three wide and from then it’s kind of like I’m on my own. The 18 was getting a shove. You’re just trying to maintain. A lot of scenarios go through your head about how you’re going to the lead. It just didn’t play out.”
Even with a good push, though, Jones wasn’t sure it would have been enough to beat Busch. In the final round of pit stops, Jones took two tires in what he said was doing what was needed “to get track position” while the 2015 champion came for four fresh Goodyears.
“I don’t know that we really had anything for Kyle at the end,” Jones said. “We were on two tires and he was on four. I mean you put us both on four, put me out front, we probably hold him off. Put him out front, he probably holds us off again.”
RELATED: Scenes from the weekend at Pocono
Crew chief Chris Gayle told NASCAR.com that he had one item he wished he had a mulligan on that could have set Jones up for greater success.
“Looking back at the end of the race, I wish I would have taken two tires on the competition caution (on Lap 20),” Gayle said. “Then I would have had all those guys that had right-side tires and had a buffer to anybody with four. Tires didn’t matter today and it was totally track position — being able to hold someone off so that could have put us in position to be further up at the end.”
All in all, the podium finish coming off a race where the team ran just 22 of 400 laps was a welcome one for the third-year Cup crew chief.
“It helped get back some of the points we gifted everyone last week,” Gayle said. “It’s big — I feel like we just needed to have a clean race. That’s what we had today.”
The third-place finish is Jones’ fourth top five of the season and leaves him 15th in the point standings, one point ahead of Kyle Larson and Jimmie Johnson, who are tied for the final spot that would provisionally make the playoffs. But Jones isn’t worried about the playoff picture just yet — the lone JGR driver without a win believes that the victory is coming.
“We’re still confident we can get a win,” Jones said. “We’re not in that mode yet (of looking at the playoff picture). We know as long as we can run well, points come with that. We’ve had some unfortunate circumstances this year and as long as we can keep running well we’ll be fine. Ask me in a month and if we’re still in a bad spot, then I’ll probably say yes (to looking at the playoff picture).”