Erik Jones / No. 20 Sport Clips Toyota Camry Preview AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway

DALLAS, Texas (Oct. 29, 2019)

No. 20 Sport Clips Toyota Camry News and Notes:

·        JONES AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: Heading to Texas Motor Speedway this weekend, Erik Jones will make his seventh Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series start at the 1.5-mile track. In his previous six races at the track, Jones has three top-five finishes, four top-10 finishes, an average start of 15.0, an average finish of 9.3 and has led 94 laps. Jones has finished fourth in the last three Cup Series races at the track. In addition to his Cup starts, Jones has six Xfinity Series starts earning three wins, all six finishes inside the top four, two pole starting positions, an average start of 1.8, an average finish of 2.2 and has led 368 laps. In the Truck Series, Jones has three starts with one win, an average start of 3.7, an average finish of 9.0 and has led 185 laps. 

·        JGR AT TEXAS MOTOR SPEEDWAY: Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) has 112 total starts at Texas Motor Speedway in Cup Series competition. In those starts, the team has earned eight wins, 31 top-five finishes, 50 top-10 finishes and five pole starting positions. The team has led 1,973 laps, completed 36,024 of 37,328 attempted laps (96.5%) and earned an average start of 15.1 and an average finish of 14.8. Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch both have three wins at the Texas track with Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards each earning one win.  

·        THIS WEEK ON THE NO. 20 CAMRY: This week Sport Clips, based in Georgetown, Texas, returns to the No. 20 Toyota Camry for their final primary race of the 2019 season.

·        MARTINSVILLE RACE RECAP: Erik Jones and the No. 20 team started the race at Martinsville Speedway from the eighth position and battled the handling of the No. 20 Camry for most of the race. Jones was able to maintain his position in the top 15 until a flat tire mid-race derailed the team’s day. Continuing to gain positions through the remainder of the race, Jones was able to battle back from three laps down to finish the race in 20th as the first car one lap down.

·        RACE INFO: The AAA Texas 500 at Texas Motor Speedway is scheduled for Sunday, November 3, 2019. Coverage will begin at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN, PRN Radio, SIRIUS XM Channel 90 and the NBC Sports App.

Jones Career NASCAR Cup Series Stats at Texas Motor Speedway: 

Jones 2019 Season NASCAR Cup Series Stats:

Jones Career NASCAR Cup Series Stats:

From the Driver’s Seat:

Erik Jones: “I like going to Texas. I enjoy checking out the area and getting good food with friends. It’s honestly probably one of my top stops on the circuit. For the track, it’s a track where I’ve run well in both the Xfinity and Truck Series and been able to get to victory lane in both series. We’ve come close in the Cup car a couple of times at Texas. It would be nice to close one out at Texas to end the year. It’s been fun and a good track, especially with the traction compound widening the track out. We’ll try to pick up where we left off in the spring and put ourselves in position to contend for the win at the end of the day with our Sport Clips Camry.”

From the Pit Box:

Chris Gayle: “The 20 team had a really strong car in the Texas spring event and had a shot to win the race at the end of the day. The new Texas surface combined with the 2019 Aero package provides interesting racing and driving scenarios compared to other tracks this year. Most of the cars seem to be a lot more wide open in for the lap, especially in the banked corner compared to most other 1.5 mile tracks. Combining that with the lack of lap time fall off from the tires allows some interesting choices to be made from a pit strategy and car setup standpoint. I think it will be very interesting to see how a lot of the teams/organizations choose to setup their cars for this particular track with the cooler fall conditions. I think it will provide an opportunity to do some unique pit strategy to try and gain track position for this event. We should have a very good shot at having a solid event again this race and contend for another race win in 2019.”