Erik Jones / No. 20 Sport Clips Toyota Camry Preview Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway

DAYTONA, Fla. (Jul. 3, 2019)

No. 20 Sport Clips Toyota Camry News and Notes:

·        JONES AT DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY: Erik Jones returns to Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero Sugar 400 as the defending winner after earning his first-career Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series win in last year’s event. Including last year’s win, Jones has five-career Cup Series starts the 2.5-mile superspeedway. Jones also has six starts at the track in the Xfinity Series with a best finish of eighth in 2015 and one start in the Truck Series in 2015 where he earned a second-place finish. 

·        JGR AT DAYTONA INTERNATIONAL SPEEDWAY: Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) has 135 total starts at Daytona International Speedway in Cup Series competition. In those starts, the team has earned seven wins, 32 top-five finishes, 44 top-10 finishes and four pole starting positions. The team has led 1,666 laps, completed 21,564 of 24,102 attempted laps (89.5%) and earned an average start of 15.7 and an average finish of 19.9. Tony Stewart and Denny Hamlin both have two wins for the team with Dale Jarett, Kyle Busch and Jones each earning one win for the team. JGR earned a 1-2-3 finish during this year’s Daytona 500 when Hamlin earned his second Daytona 500 victory and was followed across the line by Busch and Jones.

·        THIS WEEK ON THE NO. 20 CAMRY: Sport Clips returns to the No. 20 Camry this weekend as Jones looks to defend his 2018 Coke Zero Sugar 400 win.

·        MEDIA AVAILABILITY: Jones will be in the media center on Thursday at 11:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. ET for media availability.

·        FAN APPEARANCE: On Saturday, July 6 before the Coke Zero Sugar 400, Jones will make an appearance in the UNOH Fan Zone for a Q&A from 3:45 – 4:00 p.m. ET.

·        CHICAGO RACE RECAP: Jones started the race at Chicagoland Speedway from the 21st position, but quickly after the green flag was waved, the race was red flagged for more than three hours for storms in the area. Following the red flag, Jones was able to start his move through the field and crossed the finish line with a strong seventh-place finish.

·        RACE INFO: The Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway is scheduled for Saturday, July 6, 2019. Coverage will begin at 7:30 p.m. ET on NBC, MRN and SIRIUS XM Channel 90.

Jones Career NASCAR Cup Series Stats at Daytona International Speedway:

Jones 2019 Season NASCAR Cup Series Stats:

Jones Career NASCAR Cup Series Stats:

From the Driver’s Seat:

Erik Jones: “I’m looking forward to getting back to Daytona. It’s always cool coming back to a track where you are the defending race winner. Looking forward to the race and defending our win from last year. It’s always fun to get down there on the 4th of July. It’s usually a great crowd, a great turnout and great atmosphere for the race. Looking forward to getting out there and hopefully we’ll be able to get another win to lock ourselves in the Playoffs and have a lot fun at the same time.”

 From the Pit Box:

Chris Gayle: “This will be the debut of the new superspeedway package at Daytona. Our team and entire organization learned a lot from our Talladega experience with this new package, and so did NASCAR. The entire field was really fast at Talladega, so the larger spoiler wicker will be implemented for this Daytona race. The summer Daytona race is always about handling well, much more than Talladega. So this pushes us to take a slightly different approach between the two race tracks. There is also a little different approach when it comes to strategy and how you call/plan to run these races and avoid trouble all race. I think since we’ve had so few winners this year that this race will be much more chaotic than normal. A lot of guys that may not have a shot to win anywhere else will be pushing really hard to get this win. Also the higher downforce level will make the cars much more stable and allow drivers to take even bigger risks when blocking and moving around in traffic. With that said, we’ll do all we can to avoid the chaos and be around at the end of the event, and try to defend last year’s victory.”