Erik Jones needed this. The Legacy Motor Club driver entered Sunday’s Ambetter Health 400 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway a disappointing 28th in the NASCAR Cup Series standings. Jones started the 2023 season off with finishes of 37th, 19th, 19th and 21st respectively.
Last year looked much better even though the early results didn’t show for it. He was third in Fontana, in the top 5 at both Daytona and Vegas before being caught up in late race crashes inside of 10 to go in each and 21st in Phoenix.
This year, he was never truly a threat in any of the opening four weeks. Until Sunday.
Jones brought his No. 43 Chevrolet home in eighth. He did so after qualifying only 28th. That could have forced them to press even more in the fact that Jones was 14th in this very race a year ago and fourth last summer. Another bad result could have pushed them back even further. Instead, they don’t have to now worry about that.
“Just looking at the day, I thought we were just stuck farther back,” said Jones. “It was just hard to pass. We didn’t qualify good, so it just took a while for us to get up there, and we never really did, and then we got in a crash there. Happy to get a top 10 for the No. 43 Allegiant Chevy. We needed that. We just needed a good finish. We haven’t had one this year, so it was nice to do that. I hope we keep it rolling. We just kind of squeaked that one out there at the end with some stuff working out on the last two laps for us. But happy with that, proud of that. Glad we can hopefully get some momentum going and keep rolling.”
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