Erik Jones continues to bask in the glory of scoring his first career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win last week at Daytona International Speedway.
The second year driver was able to notch career win number one in his 57th series start last week in the Coke Zero Sugar 400. However, since his historic achievement, it’s been a whirlwind for Jones this week.
“Yeah, it wasn’t much time, but it was a little bit,” Jones said Friday at Kentucky Speedway as he prepares for Saturday night’s Quaker State 400. “I mean, we got back and it was pretty late, but some of my buddies were waiting over at my house and had some celebrations ready for me, so that was fun.”
Media and sponsor obligations took up most of Jones’ immediate time after his win before he departed for Tuesday night’s Slinger Nationals super late model race in Wisconsin.
“We got to hang out for a minute and then had our early flight out to Slinger and had a good time up there with the guys and, you know, actually a lot of the guys on that team were guys that I’ve known for a long time, so it was kind of fun to hang out with them and reminisce and celebrate a little bit….,” Jones said of his trip to the iconic short track where he made an early exit because of an engine issue in the main event.
….”but then we got back to it and it was just been kind of a whirlwind week, you know, with all the travel back and forth between Wisconsin and then getting back for kind of a day on Wednesday and then leaving on Thursday – yesterday morning pretty early again, so it was a really busy week and, you know, it’s been nice. It was nice to just kind of chill out last night finally back in the motorhome and be able to focus a little bit on this weekend.”
Jones started the year off on a strong note but had faded a bit in the middle of the regular season. He got things back on track in a big way with his Daytona win and believes it will be meaningful as he progresses both in his career and the remainder of this year.
“I’m really confident, but, you know, I think overall it’s – for the young guys, for one of us to get a win is really important and hopefully I’d love to be the guy that gets some more,” he said.
“I mean, I guess that sounds greedy, but, you know, you want to be the young guy that’s really taking the lead on it and if we could go out and get some more wins, it would be really good for the young guys and for us and, you know, I’d like to see the other guys get up there and contend as well and they’ve been good and eventually we’re all going to be winning races on a consistent basis.”
