While a seventh-place finish in Sunday night’s Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway may not have been the best finish of the season for Erik Jones and his No. 43 LEGACY MOTOR CLUB team, Sunday’s race was likely the most complete effort that the pairing has put in through the season’s opening 14 races.
RESULTS: Cracker Barrel 400 at Nashville Superspeedway
And at the end of the day, the seventh-place finish isn’t fully indicative of how good of a race this actually was for Jones, who started from the 14th position and had the fifth-best average running position (9.4) throughout the duration of the race.
Jones, who entered the weekend 27th in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings, exited the race weekend in Music City, proud of the effort from his team from start to finish.
“It’s a good, positive night for us. You know, really even yesterday, unloaded really strong, made small adjustments going into the race, qualifying could have went a little better, but didn’t go bad, and then tonight everybody did a great job, pit crew did a great job, Ben [Beshore] did a great job with adjustments. So everything really went smoothly,” Jones explained.
The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season has been a strange one for Jones and his No. 43 LEGACY MOTOR CLUB team as they have had speed in several races this year, but have rarely walked out of the track with the finish they’ve deserved.
Jones says the group desperately needed a smooth weekend, and they finally got one.
“We needed this, this is really our first day all year, everything has gone smoothly from every end, so proud of that, and hopefully we can get into the rhythm of that and make it a habit of just being smooth,” Jones said.
While it was a relatively smooth race for Jones, he did have a dust-up with Christopher Bell on a Lap 119 restart, which led to contact that sent Bell spinning into the outside wall in Turn 1.
A closer look at the contact that brought out the caution. pic.twitter.com/tVvA05omKO
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) June 2, 2025
Jones, who was the previous driver of the No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota before Bell was hired for the role, says he didn’t intend to crash Bell, and that he’ll talk to him about the situation.
“Obviously want to talk to [Bell] because it’s not my intention to go in and wreck him,” Jones said of the incident. “I got three-wide and he kind of got into me on the straightaway a couple of times, and I was pretty far up on him, so I was like, ‘Okay, he knows I’m there,’ and then he got into the corner again and really just chopped off on me again and I was just trying to get off of him but I couldn’t.”
After the race, Bell seemed to see the incident from the same point of view that Jones did, as Bell didn’t place blame on Jones, and admittedly said he didn’t give Jones enough room on the restart. Fortunately, Bell was able to battle back for a solid 10th-place finish despite the crash and damage, which likely aided Bell’s feelings about the incident.
This is good news for Jones, as he can’t afford to make enemies as he attempts to claw his way back into Playoff contention.
Over the last four races, Jones and his team have really found their stride as they have a top-five, two top-10s, and three top-15 finishes, and have climbed from the bowels of the championship standings in 30th to 24th over that span. With Sunday’s performance, Jones vaulted three spots in the standings, and he now finds himself in a tight wad of drivers within striking distance of the Playoff cutline. Jones sits just 32 points outside of the Playoff cutline with 12 races remaining in the regular season.
And if he can keep results coming in like he has over the last four weeks, Jones will likely have a solid chance of making it into the Playoff field. Next up for Jones is a trip to his home track, Michigan International Speedway, where Jones has an average finish of 11.3 over his last three starts.
