Erik Jones had his best race of the 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season going Sunday at Phoenix Raceway in the Shriners Children’s 500, but at the end of a hard-fought day, Jones was left with a disappointing 31st-place finish to show for it.
On the final restart of the race with 92 laps remaining, Jones found himself solidly in the eighth position with his second top-10 finish of the season well within his sights. But as the field fanned out three, four, and possibly more, wide, Jones found himself on the bad end of a fight over real estate between Chase Briscoe and Bubba Wallace.
As Briscoe slid up the track in Turns 1 and 2, he made contact with Wallace, which sent Wallace into Jones. The LEGACY MOTOR CLUB driver attempted to minimize the damage, but he was sent into the outside wall.
In an instant, Jones had lost all of the track position that he had fought all day to obtain. And after the contact with the wall, Jones reported that something was bent on the chassis of his No. 43 Family Dollar Toyota Camry XSE.
The remainder of his day was a struggle as he would limp to the finish, seven laps off the pace. After climbing from his car, Jones was understandably not in a good mood, and Jones says that this isn’t the first issue he’s run into while running around Briscoe.
.@Erik_Jones not happy with how @ChaseBriscoe_14 raced him at Phoenix. “He seems to have an issue with me every week.”
?: @TheBryanNolen pic.twitter.com/LDPp4xjyz1
— Frontstretch (@Frontstretch) March 10, 2024
“[Chase Briscoe] was dragging us down over and over, restart after restart and he put us four wide because he was slowing us down so much,” Jones stated with frustration to Frontstretch.com. “I got wrecked, so, that sucks. But he seems to have an issue with me every week. If I call him this week, he probably won’t call me back. And I’d love to talk to him.”
While Jones was left with nothing more than a bag of what-ifs after Sunday’s race, Briscoe was able to roll on to a top-10 finish as he came home in the ninth position at Phoenix. That potentially compounded the frustrations for Jones.
After the race, Briscoe said that he’s never had a run-in that he’s aware of with Jones, and that he is ready for the call, if it comes this week.
“If he calls me, I’ll gladly answer. I’ve never really talked to Erik before, I don’t have a problem with him at all,” Briscoe said.
Briscoe says that while he doesn’t see what he did to upset Jones, if he did ruffle some feathers on the final run of the race, he’s not stressing out too much about it. Briscoe has made a concerted effort to be a much less passive driver behind the wheel in 2024.
“Yeah, I feel like we’re always racing around each other. Yeah, I’m racing hard, trying to do what’s best for my guys,” Briscoe explained. “Last year, I kind of let people go, and this year I’m not doing that. The guys that run up front are the guys that are the most aggressive, so I’m going back to those ways.”
Briscoe reiterated that he is unsure what Jones is mad about, and that he will look back at the replay when he has a chance to get more clarification on the situation.
Heading into next weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series event at Bristol Motor Speedway, a short track known for payback moments, Jones finds himself 18th in the NASCAR Cup Series driver standings, one point ahead of Briscoe, who sits 19th.
Prior to Sunday’s race at Phoenix, Jones was inside the Playoff cutline.
