After finishing third twice and second once in his last three Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series starts, Erik Jones kept the top-five streak alive with a fourth place run in Sunday’s GoBowling at The Glen.
Jones started 14th in the event after sliding in Turn 1 and blowing a tire on his first qualifying lap on Saturday. By the time the race restarted for the final stage on Lap 44, Jones was running eighth, and he worked his way forward from there.
After the strong run, Jones remained 13th in the series standings, but his lead over a 16th-place tie between Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman grew to a relatively secure 54 points.
“It’s good to keep it all going,” Jones said. “Watkins Glen is kind of the wild card in there. Being a road course and everything, we’ve been on some tracks that have been really good to us, and Watkins Glen has been good to us, but you still never know what can happen on strategy. It worked out the best it really could.
“I made a mistake yesterday (in qualifying). We started too far back, and just took us all day to get the DeWalt Camry up front. I felt like we had a fifth-place car all through practice, and we were able to get a little better finish than that.
“It’s nice to keep that streak going and now going to two places—Michigan next week and then Bristol—where I think we can win. We have some really good momentum behind us these months. You can’t keep running up in the top-five every week and not win a race. That’s what I keep telling myself and hopefully we can do it here soon.”
Greg is the author of "The Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers' Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing" and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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