Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
Erik Jones<\/a><\/strong> showed some speed at Daytona to start the season, but then his No. 43 Toyota team fell into a bit of a rut. A less-than-stellar run was capped off with a P38 finish at Martinsville, which had Legacy Motor Sports wondering if they were doomed in 2025.<\/p>\n However, the Byron, Michigan native has improved by leaps and bounds over the past couple of weeks. He\u2019s notched a couple top fives and top tens, improving to P17 overall in the point standings. Jones didn\u2019t credit any specific change to his success, instead believing in the grind of the NASCAR season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be fair to say we struggled to start the season,\u201d Jones stated<\/a>, via Door Bumper Clear<\/a>. \u201cWe worked on this car long enough. There\u2019s no magic bullet. It\u2019s not like you find some new part or piece that makes anything better. It\u2019s kind of a game of quality control, and getting the best car you can from the pieces you got.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we finally just had enough time to get our cars organized the way we wanted them to be. To where we could bring the best car we had to the track for certain weeks, in the races that we feel like we can run really well, which has been the mile-and-a-half stuff for us, this year, right now.<\/p>\n \u201cThe road course stuff, short-track \u2014 really this simplified diffuser has been kind of our Achilles heel for the last couple of years. I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s any one thing. \u2026 A lot of just good work from a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n Unfortunately for Jones, road courses aren\u2019t his specialty, so the Chicago Street Race and Sonoma back to back won\u2019t help him. However, he\u2019s riding a wave of momentum and it\u2019s bringing him some confidence. Perhaps it\u2019ll lead to a win and a playoff appearance for the veteran wheelman.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s both,\u201d Jones added<\/a>, regarding how momentum and confidence have aided his improvement in 2025. \u201cThe confidence is one, for sure. Not even the confidence, but just the mentality of it. You kind of get in that rut of, week-to-week, where you\u2019re not running well and the cars aren\u2019t doing what you want. You\u2019re getting to like Wednesday, Thursday, getting ready to go to the track and you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh man, is it going to be another week of fighting the car?\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not good in practice. We don\u2019t qualify well. You don\u2019t qualify well, then your whole weekend\u2019s kind of not going to be great, probably from there. We\u2019ve got to a roll where we\u2019re qualifying good. \u2026 That kind of started getting better and climbing week to week.<\/p>\n \u201cThen, as a driver, I think you just get settled in that groove once you\u2019re kind of rolling. It gets harder to make a mistake, I feel like almost, because you\u2019re not pushing as hard. You\u2019re just taking what you\u2019ve got, because your car is good and you\u2019re able to run up front. That\u2019s kind of where we\u2019ve been. \u2026 Everything up to this point, since really probably the Coca-Cola 600, has been pretty good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a roller coaster career for Erik Jones in the NASCAR Cup Series, but he seems to be hitting his stride with Legacy Motor Club this season. We\u2019ll see if he can get to Victory Lane this summer, as it would truly signal his impressive improvement if he\u2019s able to take a checkered flag in 2025.<\/p>\n The post Erik Jones explains newfound No. 43 speed after \u2018struggle\u2019 to start NASCAR season<\/a> appeared first on On3<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images Erik Jones showed some speed at Daytona to start the season, but then his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49654,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-49653","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114819635152358362","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49653"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49653\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}