NCWTS: ERIK JONES Ready to Leave Las Vegas with a Winning Pair

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Sept. 29, 2015) – Defending race winnerErik Jones returns to Las Vegas (Nev.) Motor Speedway for Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Rhino Linings 350. Jones and the No. 4 Toyota Racing team are in search of their first win on a mile-and-half track this season as the team looks to remain atop the Truck Series championship standings as the Truck Series heads down the homestretch of the 2015 season.

In last year’s event at Las Vegas, Jones was making just his second career NASCAR start on a mile-and-half track, but was able to bring home Kyle Busch Motorsports’ first-ever victory at Busch’s hometown track. After starting from the 13^th position, the talented youngster quickly maneuvered his way through the field and took the lead for the first time on lap 27. He ran third while battling a loose-handling Tundra during a long green-flag run in the middle stages of the race, but an adjustment on the final pit stop brought his truck to life late in the race. The Michigan native worked his way around teammate Darrell Wallace Jr., who led a race-high 84 laps, with 13 laps to go and went on to capture his third career victory in just his 14^th start.

Jones has proven to be a quick learner on the mile-and-a-half tracks, both in the Truck Series and in the NASCAR XFINITY Series. Both of the 19-year-old’s XFINITY Series wins this season have been collected at 1.5-mile tracks. He picked up his first career series win at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth in April, leading a race-high 79 laps and outdueling NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stars Brad Keselowski and Dale Earnhardt Jr on a late-race restart to seal the victory. Then in June, he hopped in the Monster Energy Camry at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., having not been able to participate in practice due to racing in the Truck Series event at Iowa Speedway in Newton, and led a race-high 94 laps en route to the victory.

The No. 4 Toyota Racing team has showed a lot of speed on the 1.5-mile tracks this season, but has yet to collect a victory. Jones has led a remarkable 44.4 percent (399) of the 898 total laps during the six races on the mile-and-half tracks in the Truck Series this season, but has just a pair of runner-up finishes to show for it. He set a Truck Series record for most laps led in a mile-and-a-half race earlier this season, when he led 151 of 167 laps at Kansas Speedway in Kansas City, but ended the day with an 11th-place finish when the race was decided by fuel mileage. The NASCAR Next alum has also captured two of his four poles this season on the 1.5-mile tracks and has an average starting position of 2.83.

The Truck Series championship points leader enters this weekend’s race with a streak of nine consecutive top-10 finishes. After the eighth race of the season at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Ill., Jones found himself fourth in points, 33 behind Matt Crafton. His recent hot roll, which has included wins at Iowa Speedway and Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ont., has propelled him to head of the table, where he sits seven points ahead of the two-time reigning champion.

Jones is one-for-one this season when he enters a race as the defending winner. He cruised to a 5.860-second victory in the American Ethanol 200 at Iowa Speedway earlier this season. The talented youngster now heads to a city known for title defenses in boxing and he’s ready to leave Las Vegas with a winning pair of Rhino Linings 350 trophies.

“Yes and no. I think we’ve raced mostly the same all year — being conservatively aggressive I guess you could say. I don’t feel like we have really put ourselves in any bad situations — maybe some that didn’t work out really how we had hoped, but we’ve been pretty conservative with most of our calls the whole year and really haven’t done a lot of things that we have done in the past to try to get ourselves in certain positions. Vegas is cool, a special place for me getting my first mile-and-a-half win there. I think it was only my second or third mile-and-a-half I ever ran in any series. It’s a cool place for me. I’m excited to go back. It’s one of my favorite mile-and-a-half tracks and should put on a good show.”

“Turns 1 and 2 are really bumpy, but they are a different type of bump than what we are used to racing on. The bumps at Las Vegas have a longer duration up and down, so it takes a different package. You need to have a ton of speed because if you are not wide open the entire time you will lose your momentum. When we start the race the sun will be out and then it will start getting dark pretty quick. The chassis will want to free up throughout the night, so you have to stay on top of the changes.”

KBM-031: The No. 4 Toyota Racing team will unload chassis KBM-031 for Saturday night’s Rhino Linings 350 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It is the same Tundra that Jones started eighth and finished sixth with at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., two races ago.

Date	Site	Driver	Start	Finish	Laps	Laps Led	Status
9/19/15	Chicagoland	Jones	8	6	150/150	19	running
7/9/15	Kentucky	Bell	16	17	144/145	0	running

Erik Jones 2014

Ryan “Rudy” Fugle will call the shots for Erik Jones’ Truck Series championship campaign in 2015. The New York native led KBM’s No. 51 Tundra team to a series-leading six wins, including Jones’ first-career victory at Phoenix International Raceway, and an Owner’s Championship as crew chief in 2013. He has eight career wins as a Truck Series crew chief, five with Kyle Busch behind the wheel and three with Jones as the pilot. He also contributed to an additional 11 wins in his role as race engineer for the organization during the 2012 and 2014 seasons. Before coming to KBM, Fugle held crew chief positions in both the Truck Series and XFINITY Series with Germain Racing.

Fugle’s lone race calling the shots for a Truck Series race at Las Vegas resulted in a 17^th-place finish with Chad Hackenbracht in 2013.