Erik Jones knows that he needs a playoff run to solidify his future at Joe Gibbs Racing. With five Toyota Cup drivers for Joe Gibbs Racing and he the only one not operating under a contract past this season, he needs to find better finishes.

Heading into last weekend in Pocono, he was 17th in points — one spot shy of the playoffs. But, following a rough weekend for Tyler Reddick, he’s back on the good side.

“We needed a good run,” Jones said of his Sunday finish. “We needed a good rebound. It’s great that we finished third.

“Hopefully just keep the momentum going next week at Indy, keep running strong like we talked about.”

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Jones, now has two top five finishes in his last three starts of the season. He says though that they should have more if his luck was better.

“I feel like we’ve had good speed,” Jones continued. “We either get run over every week or we have a penalty. I think on a normal weekend we can run top five pretty easily.”

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Now, Jones is +14 in 16th driving a car that he says is better than that.

“I think our cars are way faster than a 16th-place team,” Jones said. “Hopefully we can keep up the good runs. Three, four more races just running strong like we need to, get some stage points, we’ll be up in the top 12 pretty quickly.

“Three weeks ago we were fighting for 12 in points, trying to get into the better draw. All of a sudden we had multiple bad races. It happens. It was some things that were in our control, some things that weren’t. Hopefully if we can run like this more and more, I think the points come along right with that.

“I think we’ve been pretty fast every week. I can’t think of a race other than Martinsville where we didn’t have good speed. It’s unfortunate we haven’t finished as good as we’ve ran at some races. I think that’s going to come around. You can’t have things go wrong every single week.

“I wish we could get some more finishes, I feel like we’re moving in the right direction.”

Speaking of a direction, Jones says it’s going in the right way in hopes of another contract extension to remain with Joe Gibbs Racing for 2021.

“I’ve had a good, I guess what it is, third, fourth year at JGR now, something like that,” Jones said of his contract talks. “We started talking to them about next year, what we’re going to do moving forward.

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“I feel like right now that’s kind of the plan, is working with them. We’ll see what happens. But I feel good about it right now moving forward.”

Now, NASCAR heads to Indy, a weekend that will see them share the Indianapolis Motor Speedway with the NTT IndyCar Series. With a good look at Indy Car, Jones says that he would one day be interested in hopping in one.

“Yeah, I mean, I think any driver would love to drive any kind of form of racecar. I’ve had some opportunities to drive some other forms of racecars. It’s been pretty neat. An INDYCAR would be really neat, really different from anything I’ve ever raced.

“Yeah, I think the Indy 500 is on most racers’ bucket list at some point in their career. I definitely would take the opportunity to drive an INDYCAR, whether it just be a test or something. That would be pretty cool.”