NASCAR Cup Series: Erik Jones needs to start improving

For the sake of his NASCAR Cup Series career, especially in terms of driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, Erik Jones needs to start improving.

The 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season was a season of firsts for Joe Gibbs Racing’s Erik Jones. Most notably, it was the first season for him driving for Joe Gibbs Racing after the team announced him as the replacement for Matt Kenseth behind the wheel of the #20 Toyota.

The 2018 season was also the season during which the 22-year-old Byron, Michigan native earned the first victory of his Cup Series career, as he won the July race at Daytona International Speedway, and it was the season during which he earned his first career playoff berth.

Jones ended up finishing the 2018 season in a career-high 15th place in the championship standings, as he was able to better the 19th place finish that he recorded the previous year in his rookie season driving for Furniture Row Racing.

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Jones opened up the 2019 season with a wreck-filled and simply an overall incident-filled race in the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway — yet he ended up somehow finishing the race in third place.

In fact, his third place run nearly mirrored his incident-filled run in the July race at the track last season that resulted in him securing his first career Cup Series victory.

He went on to finish the season’s second race, the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500, at Atlanta Motor Speedway in seventh place, giving him an average finish of 5.00, which was the second best average finish through the season’s first two races. He trailed only teammate Kyle Busch in that category, as Busch finished these two races in second and sixth, respectively, giving him an average finish of 4.00.

But Jones has struggled ever since his hot stint to open up the season, as he has not finished another race in the top 12. He finished the season’s third, fourth, fifth and sixth races at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, ISM Raceway, Auto Club Speedway and Martinsville Speedway in 13th, 29th, 19th and 30th place, respectively.

All of a sudden, Jones’s average finish is a disappointing 16.83, and he sits in 14th place in the championship standings, just seven points above the playoff cut line. Both of these statistics are the worst statistics in their respective categories when compared to the statistics of the other three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers.

Busch leads the championship standings with an average finish of 2.67 while Denny Hamlin sits in second place in the standings with an average finish of 6.50. Martin Truex Jr. sits in seventh in the standings with an average finish of 10.50, including an average finish of 5.60 in the last five races.

As a result, Jones needs to really start to step up his game, or he could end up on the hot seat, and with Joe Gibbs Racing Xfinity Series driver Christopher Bell waiting in the wings for the opportunity to make the move to the Cup Series, this could spell trouble for Jones’s career, especially when it comes to keeping his ride at Joe Gibbs Racing.

Following the unexpected retirement of Carl Edwards after the 2016 season ended, 2016 Xfinity Series champion Daniel Suarez was promoted from Joe Gibbs Racing’s Xfinity Series team to their Cup Series team as Edwards’s replacement behind the wheel of the #19 Toyota.

After two consecutive seasons of finishing as the lowest Joe Gibbs Racing driver in the championship standings and the only Joe Gibbs Racing driver who failed to qualify for the playoffs, Suarez was replaced by Truex Jr.

Don’t think that a similar thing can’t happen to Jones, who finished ahead of only Suarez among Joe Gibbs Racing teammates in last year’s championship standings, if he does not step up his game and prove that he has truly earned the right to continue driving for one of the top-tier teams in the sport.

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Will Erik Jones improve enough to warrant Joe Gibbs Racing re-signing him for the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season? Only time will tell. The 2015 Truck Series champion certainly has what it takes to get the job done, but he needs to prove it, otherwise next year’s driver of the #20 Toyota in the Cup Series could very well be Christopher Bell, who currently drives the team’s #20 Toyota in the Xfinity Series.

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