DARLINGTON, S.C. – Brandon Jones viewed his second-place finish in Saturday night’s Sport Clips Haircuts VFW Help a Hero 200 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts race at Darlington Raceway as the big boost his early season needs.
Jones lost a late-race battle to eventual winner Justin Allgaier, finishing 0.578 seconds behind the winner, but the runner-up finish was easily Jones’ best run of the season. He started Saturday’s race with a seasonal resume topped by a 10th-place run at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta.
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“I think you’re going to see our season start to change here a little,” Jones said. “This is how you begin to start winning races again, running up front like we did. Justin is one of the best here, so we’re going against some really heavy hitters. So, I’m proud of that effort.”
An excellent final pit stop by his Joe Gibbs Racing crew put Jones in first place, alongside Allgaier, for the race’s final restart with 15 laps to go. Allgaier, whose No. 7 Chevrolet was strong throughout the 200 miles, took first with an impressive burst out of the second turn after the green flag and sailed away, outrunning Jones to the finish without a serious challenge.
“We were all wheel-spinning and just trying to make as much grip as we could,” Jones said. “The 7 just kept getting just barely better launches than I could on that second lane, and he had just a little more juice in the tank on the short run today. We were matching, if not slightly better on the long run, but just ran out of laps there at the end.”
Jones, who led eight laps, said the finish should lift the team’s performance in races to come.
“This is what we needed with the 20 group,” he said. “That’s the 20 team’s mentality, getting better in the races and staying in contention to have a shot. That is all I can ask for.
“These cars are just difficult the further back you continue to get in traffic. So they (the pit crew) gave me the best chance at it every time. That’s exactly what I need out of those guys.”
Jones said Allgaier, who led 31 laps, “could launch slightly better. He could get a fender on me through [Turns] 1 and 2, and then he kind of has leverage. So I’ve got to either kind of lift a little for him or hit him. I’m going to have to choose to lift a little so we can finish like we did today. All in all, he just looked like he had more fire-off [speed] than we did.”
Jones gained three spots in points to eighth place, 136 points behind series leader Allgaier.
“We’ve been struggling to kind of figure out how to make our car a little better throughout a race weekend,” Jones said. “Today, we did a really good job on that. It was nice to see that we’re putting the whole race together and trying to tie having a good car at the start and end together.”