Photo Credit: Noel Lanier
Back at the 2012 Snowball Derby, Kyle Busch would come just shy of winning – after being raced and beaten to the flag by a 15-year-old, named Erik Jones. Busch, impressed by the youngster, approached him to join Kyle Busch Motorsports for the upcoming 2013 season.
“I never would have expected to get beat by him in that race, but the last run of the race he did a great job,” Busch recalled. “We raced clean, we raced hard, and he scored the victory, and I knew he was going to be good that day.”
After running two partial seasons – five races in 2013 and 12 races last year, Jones was selected to run the full schedule in 2015. It paid off as with a sixth place finish in the Ford EcoBoost 200 at Homestead-Miami Speedway on Friday night, he became the youngest ever NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Champion, scoring his first championship at the age of 19.
“Well, I think it’s going to take some time to sink in, you know, but just an awesome season,” he commented. “Just a real team effort from the start, and some of the adversity we went through early on, and putting the team back together to championship form there for the latter part of the season and really going and working for the championship and earning ourselves a cushion coming into Homestead, and honestly still being able to run strong at Homestead all day. Just really proud of everybody. Just can’t thank them all enough. Thanks to Toyota and TRD and just Kyle (Busch) and Samantha (Busch) for the opportunity alone. So many things had to come into play for me to even be here at this moment, so it’s just pretty special for everybody.”
The year didn’t start off as Jones wanted, as he didn’t have the points lead through the first 15 races of the season. However, he says following a 23rd place finish at Gateway, his mentality changed in how he was approaching the season. The change in his approach allowed him to take the points lead and hold it through the final eight races of the season.
“I kind of switched my mentality to the point of take the wins when we can get them, but we need to take these seconds, thirds, fourths and fifths when we can get them, as well, and not try to force anything,” he explained.” The last eight races or even a little bit before that we had a streak of top 10s here all the way to the end. I don’t know the exact number it ended up at, but just finished in the top 10, being consistent, being competitive and running up front and contending for wins, that’s all we needed to do throughout the rest of the year, and that’s what we did.”
Going through the adversity, team owner Kyle Busch says he never gave up belief in Jones or crew chief Rudy Fugle as he believed in the leader that Fugle is.
“I think he’s done a tremendous job with Erik being a younger driver and having the emotions that I once had, as well, too, and trust me, they were probably still there two years ago,” he said. “Erik has done a lot of growing up I think in a short period of time, and it’s also the limelight, but I think with the great people that have been around him, that we’ve had surround him, that’s brought him to the level which he raced those final 15 weeks and top-10’d it each and every week to end the season.
“I never discounted our team or our trucks or Erik’s ability or anybody. I just knew that sooner or later it needed to turn the corner, and fortunately they did that, and everything turned out well once they got through Texas I think was a rough night, and then Gateway was a rough night, then went to Iowa and put it right back on top. Since then they’ve seemed to do the right things.”
Coming into the final event of the season, Jones had a 19-point advantage ahead of Tyler Reddick and as a result, played it conservative throughout the race on Friday night, running just inside of the top-10. He’d finish the season with a 15 point lead.
“I don’t think we ever put ourselves in a position to be in a situation we didn’t want to be in,” he commented. “I thought we did a good job of letting everything sort out and then kind of going to work and getting spots. It’s a shame, I think we had a really good truck, but we never really needed to race or had the opportunity to go up and race with the guys up front. You know, we just kind of ran around the middle part of the top 10 all day, and that’s honestly all we needed to do.”
Fugle got to share in the glory as it marks the third time in the series that he has won a championship, leading the owner’s championship charge in 2013 and 2014. Fugle commented that it’s “pretty awesome” as this was their goal since finding out last November that Jones would be running the full schedule in 2015.
While it marks the first driver’s championship for Kyle Busch Motorsports, it marks the third straight and fourth overall owner’s championship for the organization. Busch says its an honor to have Jones bring home the championship this season.
“It’s certainly been a lot of blood, sweat and tears over the years, but it’s been pretty awesome, as well, too,” he stated. “I can’t say enough about the people, everyone that’s been at Kyle Busch Motorsports at the beginning, been there now or future. You know, it certainly has been pretty awesome to work with every one of those individuals, and it takes a lot of that in order to get the job done the way that we have over our existence in the series, and to set the record of winning an owner’s championship the first year out was pretty awesome, and then to continue that on with different people on down the line with Eric Phillips and with Rudy and Jerry now, we’ll see how that continues to go on down through the years.”
