Food often brings people closer together. Just ask NASCAR Hall of Famer Matt Kenseth and three-time Cup Series winner Erik Jones.
Kenseth joined Legacy Motor Club as a competition advisor toward the end of the 2023 season. One of his first calls was to Jones, who, roughly six years earlier at Joe Gibbs Racing, replaced the 2003 Cup Series champion in the No. 20 Toyota.
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The new teammates settled on Flatiron, a restaurant in Davidson, North Carolina, as their meetup location. Over nearly two years, they’ve established a close-knit relationship, with Kenseth even attending Jones’ surprise birthday party in late May.
“Erik and I have always gotten along, but we never really knew each other at a high level at all,” Kenseth told NASCAR.com. “It was somewhat interesting because when I left Gibbs, they decided not to bring me back. I wholeheartedly wanted to be back for another year or two before I retired, and they replaced me with Erik, which makes it kind of interesting. The same thing happened with him.
“I think he had a lot of apprehension because he didn’t know me that well, and he took over that car when I wasn’t there.”
During Jones’ rookie campaign in 2017, when his services were loaned to Furniture Row Racing, he occasionally interacted with Kenseth as quasi-teammates. Jones was also Kenseth’s fill-in driver late in 2015 when the 39-time Cup winner was suspended for deliberately wrecking Joey Logano — another former No. 20 car driver — at Martinsville Speedway.
Kenseth believes Jones was a bit anxious when they first met for lunch, unsure of how the situation would unfold.
Jones, a fellow Midwesterner like Kenseth, admits replacing a former champion at JGR made it tough to connect. At the same time, Kenseth never feared a younger driver in a manufacturer’s system as he always believed in his own ability. Still, JGR opted to go in a new direction after Jones took the Craftsman Truck Series and Xfinity Series by storm, collecting 16 victories, including the 2015 Truck championship with Kyle Busch Motorsports.
“Matt knew that he was the guy that was going to be out in that situation and ended up moving to make room for myself coming up through there,” Jones said. “That made it harder to build a relationship. I don’t know that there was any animosity from him towards me, and obviously, there was none from me to him. But when you’re getting replaced, it’s never an easy situation.”
There was no angst from Kenseth.
“I’ve been around it for a long time, and the owners and other people make those decisions,” he said. “It’s not like the driver did it, or he was the owner and let me go.
“To be fair, Erik was Toyota’s guy at the time. He was Kyle’s [Busch] guy, Coach’s [Joe Gibbs] guy and was running really well and having a ton of success. I wasn’t exactly a spring chicken, so if you look at it, objectively, you can’t really blame anyone for that.”
Aside from lunch, Jones can’t recall exactly how the duo struck up a friendship. While befriending each other, it became apparent they had interchangeable personalities.
“I see a lot of my younger self in Erik, for sure,” Kenseth added. “He’s not nearly as funny, but other than that, there are a lot of similarities. There are certainly a lot of differences, too, but there are a lot of similarities, which helps me with him because I see a lot of things where I feel like I’ve learned from in the past: good, bad or indifferent.
“Same thing with John Hunter [Nemechek]. I can say certain things or act certain ways that I can sympathize with what they are saying, but I can also live through a lot of it and help them from making the same mistakes, wrong judgments or whatever that I did.”
Away from the track, Kenseth has turned Jones into a fitness guru. Jones doesn’t think he will ever get to Kenseth’s level as he’s an avid long-distance runner, having competed in several marathons. Their longest run together is roughly four miles.
With guidance from Kenseth, Jones aims to continue improving his health through regular gym visits. Mentally, he’s found it helpful in getting through certain races.
“I think I’m in the best shape I’ve been in through racing,” Jones said. “Thirty-six to 38 races per year is hard on your body. When you’re 20 years old, it’s easy to hop in a car and go and feel good about everything. When you’re on the backside of 20, it’s not as easy to recover, not as easy to get through some of these days.
“That’s the biggest thing for me, just feeling better the day after these days and recovering faster has been the biggest bonus.”
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Recent structural changes within Legacy Motor Club have elevated the team on the track, too. With six consecutive top-20 finishes, highlighted by a fifth-place effort last weekend at EchoPark Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway), Jones has skyrocketed 13 positions in the regular-season championship standings to 16th. Technically, he’s tied with Austin Cindric for 15th, but the Talladega Superspeedway victor holds the tiebreaker.
While the two-chartered team has taken big steps forward, Kenseth remains a realist. In his advisory role, he assists Legacy’s drivers, attends competition and engineer meetings, mingles with sponsors and frequents roughly 10 races throughout the season. He gets a firsthand glimpse into how the team operates.
“To be totally honest, we started the year not taking as big of a step forward as I expected or was hoping we would take,” Kenseth said. “I feel like we took a pretty big leap within the last [seven or eight] weeks. We’ve had cars — both or one of them — that were capable of running in the top 10. I don’t know if we had cars last year capable of running in the top 10, but once or twice.
“It’s been a big leap, but there’s a long way to go to get to where we want to be.”
With eight races remaining in the regular season, Jones ranks 18th on the playoff grid, 49 points below current bubble driver Bubba Wallace.