NCWTS: ERIK JONES Looking to Get an Early Start on His Holiday Shopping List

MOORESVILLE, N.C. (Nov. 17, 2015) – With a finish of 15th or better in Friday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series season finale at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway, 19-year-old Erik Jones will be crowned the youngest champion in series history. While Jones certainly aspires to add this major accomplishment to his personal resume, perhaps equally important to the racing prodigy is delivering a much-coveted Driver’s Championship to boss and mentor Kyle Busch.

Busch first crossed paths with Jones racing Super Late Models in January of 2012, when both opened up their racing seasons in the SpeedFest 200 at Watermelon Capital Speedway in Cordele, Ga. In the early stages of the event a rocket fast car with a No. 4 on the side blew past Busch’s No. 51 Camry. While Jones and his No. 4 team would blow a motor while running second just before the halfway mark of the race, he had already made a lasting impression on Kyle Busch Motorsports’ (KBM) owner.

Later that season, Busch entered the All-American 400 Super Late Model race at Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville, Tenn., on the same weekend that the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. Having to miss the practice sessions, he called upon Jones, who was also entered in the race to shake down his Camry for him. While the Michigan teenager was already on Busch’s map, it was later that year at the prestigious Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Fla., that he made a name for himself across the motorsports world. The 16-year-old raced door-to-door with the NASCAR Superstar and in the end it was Jones in his family-owned car that crossed the finish line first.

In 2013 when NASCAR lowered the minimum age requirement for tracks 1.1-mile or less, KBM signed the then 16-year-old Jones to a five-race deal in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. The talented youngster finished inside the top 10 in each of his first four starts and then in his fifth-and-final start became the youngest winner of a NASCAR National Series event with his win at Phoenix (Ariz.) International Raceway. The win helped propel the No. 51 Tundra team to the organization’s second Owner’s Championship.

Jones schedule more than doubled in 2014 and he rewarded the team by capturing three wins, two poles, five top-five and eight top-10 finishes across his 12 starts and once again was part of an Owner’s Championship with the No. 51 team. At last year’s banquet, Busch and Jones set a goal of winning both the Driver’s and Owner’s Championships in 2015 and not having to share the Truck Series side of the stage with another team.

The No. 4 Tundra team started out 2015  strong, earning top-three finishes in four of the first six races, but finishes of 15^th and 23^rd  in early June put the team in a hole in the championship standings. After the eighth race of the season at Gateway Motorsports Park in Madison, Ill., Jones found himself fourth in points, 33 behind Matt Crafton. Behind the strength of 14 consecutive top-10 finishes, which has included wins at Iowa Speedway in Newton, Canadian Tire Motorsport Park in Bowmanville, Ont., and Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, the NASCAR Next alum has propelled to the top of the standings, where he sits 19 points ahead of fellow teenager Tyler Reddick going into Friday night’s 134-lap event.

With the giving season fast approaching, Jones will be looking to get an early start on his holiday shopping list Friday night at Homestead. The 19-year-old is ready to deliver something that is shiny, silver and will bring lots of joy to Kyle Busch.

“Well, for me, honestly more than winning it for myself, just giving back to KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) – the whole organization – for Kyle (Busch, team owner), you know? Obviously, I want to win the championship, but Kyle’s wanted a Driver’s Championship since he started his program in the Truck Series and hasn’t been able to get it yet, so if I could bring that back for him, you know, that’d kind of be just a nice thank you for the last three years and what he’s done for me over those three years. So, obviously we all want to win it as an organization and I want to win it as well. It’s nice to know what we’re doing next year, but for me to have a Truck Series championship and know that we can have the opportunity to get an XFINITY Series Championship next year, it’d be nice to have both of those series championships. There are only a few guys that have been able to win in both those series, so for me it’s kind of the stats thing. You always want to be able to look back at those stats and getting that championship trophy would just be kind of one of the cool steps in my career that I would be able to hopefully accomplish.”

How did your test session go in the truck at Homestead last month?
“The test went really well. It started out a little on the rough side just from not being there and it’s such a unique mile-and-a-half I think that anybody gets there for the first time and it’s just a learning curve. Figuring out how you need to get around a certain place especially like that. Once I kind of figured that out, I got that out of my system then I was pretty comfortable and pretty happy. We had pretty good speed so we’ll just see how it pans out when we get there this weekend. I know it’s always a little bit different, but as long as we can stay out of the wall — I got into it in testing so if we can stay away from that over the weekend then we’ll be just fine.”

“I think you’d have to ask him. To me, it’s the confidence he has in his equipment. Everyone at Kyle Busch Motorsports does a really good job in working hard to put the best possible piece out there each and every week. Obviously Toyota is a huge supporter of ours and Erik (Jones) is a great driver. We knew that we had a great opportunity to go for a championship this year. It has worked out so far and we have one more week to see that come to fruition and celebrate our first Driver and Owner Championship together and being able to be the only truck team on stage at the banquet. I look forward to that next week — probably more so than Erik might. The pressure is off of me, it’s on Erik. It’s fun to see our, mine and Samantha’s (Busch, wife), organization run like that and compete for championships and to ultimately score our first Driver’s Championship this week would be pretty special.”

“Homestead hopefully will put a stamp on the really good year that this No. 4 Tundra team has had. We’ve had a lot of strong races, led a lot of laps and have consistently produced fast race trucks. Hopefully we can have another consistent weekend that is uneventful and finish it off with a championship.”

KBM-021: The No. 4 Toyota Tundra team will unload chassis KBM-021 for Friday night’s NCWTS season finale at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.  The last time the Tundra saw the track, Jones led a race-high 117 laps en route to victory two weeks ago at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. The Tundra has won eight times in 12 career starts, including the 2013 season finale at Homestead with owner-driver Kyle Busch behind the wheel.

Date	Site	Driver	Start	Finish	Laps	Laps Led	Status
11/6/15	Texas	Jones	5	1	147/147	117	running
6/5/15	Texas	Jones	1	15	166/167	68	running
5/15/15	Charlotte	Jones	2	2	139/139	88	Running
10/31/14	Texas	Ky. Busch	2	1	152/152	80	Running
9/27/14	Las Vegas	Jones	13	1	146/146	19	Running
9/13/14	Chicago	Ky. Busch	7	1	150/150	66	Running
6/26/14	Kentucky	Ky. Busch	1	1	150/150	91	Running
6/6/14	Texas	Jones	5	11	166/167	0	Running
5/16/14	Charlotte	Ky. Busch	1	1	134/134	130	Running
11/15/13	Homestead	Ky. Busch	12	1	148/148	62	Running
11/1/13	Texas	Ky. Busch	11	28	96/147	2	Engine
9/13/13	Chicago	Ky. Busch	7	1	150/150	52	Running

Year	Races	Win	T5	T10	Pole	Laps	Led	Earnings	AvSt	AvFn	RAF	Miles	LLF
2013	5	1	2	5	0	1017	84	$91,860	13.2	6.0	5	847	5
2014	12	3	5	8	2	1789	300	$240,336	6.1	9.2	11	2030	9
2015	22	3	11	19	5	3303	925	$641,130	4.6	6.3	21	4147.4	19
Totals	39	7	18	32	7	6109	1309	1,106,256	6.2	7.2	37	7019.0	33

Kabat, Schertzer, De La Torre, Taraboulos and Company (KSDT) – a Miami-based accounting and advisory firm founded in 1976 that provides a full range of professional, technical, consultative and business services to regional clients in a wide range of industries – will adorn the B-post of Erik Jones’ No. 4 Toyota Tundra for the Truck Series finale at Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway.

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 nine career wins as a Truck Series crew chief, five with Kyle Busch behind the wheel and four with Jones. He also contributed to an additional 11 wins in his role as race engineer for the organization during the 2012 and 2014 seasons.

                              

Fugle was victorious in his lone race atop the pit box at Homestead in 2013 when Busch led 62 laps and secured KBM’s second Truck Series Owner’s Championship with the win.