With nearly 300 starts, and having been a full-time Cup driver since 2017, it would be difficult to find a moment where Jones intentionally drove ‘dirty’ against his fellow competitors. Sitting 27th in points, he finds himself in a must-win situation, just like Richmond winner Austin Dillon. But if he were faced with a similar situation at the end of one of the next three races, would he consider going anywhere near as far as the driver of the No. 3 did?
“No. No, not a chance,” he asserted in a Saturday press conference. “I don’t race that way. I wouldn’t have done it. I can probably count – I honestly don’t know – less than five times that I’ve wrecked anyone intentionally in my entire career. Just not the way I race. Everyone’s got their own code. Everybody has different ways that they go about it. For me, that’s just not the way I raced.”
Erik Jones, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, Dollar Tree Toyota Camry
Photo by: Rusty Jarrett / NKP / Motorsport Images
After a year of struggles for Legacy Motor Club, a win would go very far in helping them salvage something out of 2024, but even still, Jones is a firm ‘no’ on intentional wrecking. Recently, he signed a multi-year contract extension to continue driving for LMC and in a hypothetical question, he was asked about a deal where his team tells him to wreck his way to Victory Lane.
“I don’t think I could do that,” reiterated Jones. “That’s not to say that things don’t change in the moment, and how you were raced before that changes things. Obviously, that was not the situation here, but it depends on what is going down, but it is really not in my playbook.”
The trickle-down effect
Another issue with the Richmond melee is how it may affect driving etiquette in lower divisions throughout the country. The NASCAR Cup Series is supposed to be the pinnacle — setting the example for the rest of the ranks — so if the stars are plowing through each other for race wins, up-and-comers may see that as an excuse to do the same.
Speaking on the ‘trickle-down effect,’ Jones agreed that it has an impact on driving standards across the board: “What we do on Sunday trickles down and not just to Xfinity and Trucks and ARCA; it trickles down to late models, street stocks, front wheel drives, quarter midgets, go-karts – all of these guys and kids watch what we do on Sunday, and think what we do is right.
“I think racing has changed a lot since 2009 — that was the first time I raced a full size car, and I can vividly remember my dad and I talking about what this year was about was earning respect. Do not be out there running into people. It is not what we are doing. You have to give these guys respect — earn their respect and then when we get to that point, we will go race. That is how we did things. Things have changed a lot.”
But why have things changed? Jones noted the current era of cars and how difficult it is to pass in modern NASCAR. But could it be that the attitudes have also shifted where winning at all costs supersedes earning respect?
“I was watching the CARS Tour race (Friday) night at Ace, and those guys could barely go more than 10 laps without a yellow coming out — somebody is spinning somebody, somebody is wrecking somebody. It is not what I enjoy in racing. Some bumping and banging is fine. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ve for sure moved a guy up out of the way for a win … but I think there is a line there. Wrecking cars and wrecking stuff out has become more and more acceptable. It just wasn’t really an option when I was younger. We just couldn’t rebuild cars over and over.”