BROOKLYN, Mich. — Denny Hamlin’s rally to his second consecutive victory wasn’t the only drive from worst to first worth watching Sunday at Michigan International Speedway. Another monumental effort from the back of the pack nearly rewarded Erik Jones, a home-state favorite.
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Jones powered to a runner-up finish in Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400, turning in a season-best result for the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club Toyota group. Any jubilation for the organization’s first top-five outcome of the year was tempered slightly by how close Jones & Co. came to a breakthrough celebration, one that would have galvanized the gains that the team has been trying to sustain.
“It’s good. I mean, it’s a nice day. It’s disappointing in some ways at the same time to have the car we had,” Jones said. “It’s not like we fluked into second. We were up here all day and running well, and we had a fast car. It just didn’t work out perfect, you know. We needed everything to go well. The restarts got chaotic at the end, and the last one didn’t work out for us. I had to pick through traffic and by the time I got up there, the race was over and Denny was gone. So, a lot of positives to take away. I mean, the car was really fast, and I couldn’t even ask much out of it for balance. So, we’ll work on it, keep bringing cars like this, and we’ll win races soon.”
Jones’ task was made more difficult by trouble in Saturday’s practice, when the No. 43 Toyota slowed with a flat left-rear tire. The unapproved adjustments to repair damage from the incident forced the team to the rear of the 37-car field for Sunday’s start.
Jones opted for a patient approach to make his way forward, dodging the series of crashes that disrupted the race’s early rhythm and knocked several drivers from contention. Keeping it clean paid off, and the car’s balance helped Jones make it to second place by the end of Stage 2 for more crucial points.
“I knew the car was fast, and just trying not to burn the tires off it being overzealous early in runs and letting it come to me, and it’s just what I’ve been focusing on a lot lately,” Jones said. “So I felt like we did good with that, and we made the right choice definitely with doing the repairs. Yeah, I told the guys before, it was going to be a chaotic race, and it was definitely that. It was a lot of sloppy racing, a lot of mess going on, but happy to get through it and come up with a good one.”
The choice to fix the No. 43’s ills and give up a season-best 10th starting spot was one that Justin Alexander, in his first year as an LMC crew chief, grappled with.
“That was terrible. We made a tough decision overnight to kind of repair the car and give up the track position, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure it was going to pay off because starting in the back is so hard,” Alexander said, “but the car was just really phenomenal. … We made one change to the car all day. I mean, it was a really good car, and he was super happy with it from the get-go. Yeah, it was a challenge. We were able to drive up through the field the first run a lot more than I actually thought we were.”
Alexander said he shared some of Jones’ bittersweet sentiment, winding up one spot short of the leaderboard’s top perch – which Hamlin roared away with by a whopping 11-second margin. Hamlin’s strength, plus some setbacks with how restarts shook out, proved to be too much to overcome, but Alexander said that many of the positives should help with the team’s momentum.
“I really did think we had a race-winning car,” Alexander said, “so when you have a car like this, it’s … you don’t expect to win, because wins are so hard to get, but when you don’t win, you know you had the car to win, so it was a great points day, though. We got a lot of stage points there in Stage 2, and then finished No. 2, so I think we probably took a big leap in points up from where we’re at.”
Alexander was correct. Jones jumped three spots to 18th in the Cup Series standings, resting just 18 points behind the cutoff line for the provisional 16-driver Chase postseason grid. After Watkins Glen International three races earlier, Jones was 25th with a 69-point deficit to the same elimination line.
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Four top-15 finishes in the last five events — capped by Sunday’s runner-up — have helped reverse that downward trend. Almost as importantly, the performance gains have bolstered Jones’ morale as the regular season heads deeper into its home stretch.
“I mean, we definitely have something to build off of,” Jones said. “I think I am confident every time I’m showing up to the track that the cars are good. There’s a stretch where that was a question, where I didn’t know what I was going to be getting into, and now I feel like I can hop in and, like I said, just be loose, hammer down, not think about it, and drive as fast as I can drive and tell them what it needs, and that’s a good feeling as a driver. Just hope it continues going forward, and we can keep making it better.”