Erik Jones needs a win to qualify for this year’s NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. He, along with more than 20 other drivers, has just two weeks to grab four remaining spots. It’s a result of modern NASCAR’s cutthroat championship format, where no driver can win the title before the last lap of the year.
Jones sits a distant 27th in points after a growing season with his team, Legacy Motor Club, and an injury that sidelined him for two races. Jones and his competitors have only two races left to make it happen—Daytona and Darlington—and he has more than an outside chance: His three-career Cup Series wins came at those two tracks.
“It's a really different mentality going into both of them,” Jones told Motorsport.com. “Darlington is a technical race, and one that I feel like you have to have a plan for: how you're going to manage your day and what you need out of your car as the race transitions from day to night. The Daytona race, it's less of your own plan and more of what everybody else is doing around you.”
Like the championship itself, qualifying for the NASCAR Cup playoffs goes down to the wire: A win secures one of 16 spots, while any leftover spots are filled by the winless drivers with the most points. But that elusive win is up for grabs through the final lap of the regular season, and anyone from 17th through 34th in the points standings could get it—knocking out a driver who’s tentatively “in” and changing the postseason landscape.
For a few years, that final regular-season lap happened at Daytona International Speedway. This year, Daytona will be the penultimate race before the playoffs, while the regular-season finale moves elsewhere: the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. This is how Jones — and likely, a sea of other playoff hopefuls — will tackle thesea couple of polar-opposite, high-stakes tracks at the end of NASCAR's regular season.
Daytona: Preparing for Chaos
This weekend is the chaotic 2.5-mile Daytona oval, stereotypically known as a crapshoot due to wrecks and three-wide pack racing equalizing the field. Not every driver loved the uncertainty of Daytona as the season finale, but Jones did.
“I guess I heard Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. put it a good way,” Jones told Motorsport.com. “The guys who are fast and going to be racing for a championship, they're probably already in the playoffs. They're not in a situation where they've got to win Daytona to get in, so why not put it down to that last-second winner to make it exciting?”
To be successful at Daytona, Jones said drivers need to be in tune with their car and the air around them. Drivers use drafting studies and reports to plan for what may be the best position on track, but Jones said they also need hands-on experience.
“Until you get out there and feel it for yourself, when you're pushing and being pushed—that's when you really learn,” Jones said. “In Daytona, you see the same guys up front over and over. They're much more calculated than what's presented on TV and what's perceived, at times, by everybody. If you can pick up on what moves those guys are making and why they're making them, things start to become more clear.”
Drivers and teams enter Daytona with plans for drafting with teammates and manufacturer alliances. Jones and Legacy Motor Club were with Chevrolet until this year, when they switched to Toyota Racing Development. Toyota has the smallest group of Cup cars.
“We had meetings at Chevrolet, but there were so many cars that it was kind of hard to get a plan together to where everybody could stay consistent,” Jones said. “You almost had to split up in two groups and have two different plans of how you were going to go through the race.
“With TRD having eight cars, it's easier at times to make more speed than it is with such a big pack. It’s pretty easy for us to all stay on the same plan, and it's fun to be a part of those plans when you can come up with something that throws everybody for a loop. That's the part of speedway racing that I think is exciting: seeing if you can outsmart everybody.”
Jones doesn’t know Toyota’s plans for Daytona yet, because that’s a morning-of decision depending on the group’s speed and race outlook. But he knows plans are never perfect.
“There's so much that balances on how the race is playing out, whether it's running a lot of green-flag laps or it's a lot of chaos and yellow-flag laps,” Jones told Motorsport.com “It doesn't matter sometimes how good of a position you put yourself in. There are some things that always end up out of your control. You're at the mercy of everyone around you.”
Darlington: The Thinking Driver's Race
This year, the regular-season finale happens next weekend at Darlington: a 75-year-old track known for ripping tires apart and forcing drivers to change their technique throughout a race. Jones said Daytona is about racing the pack, while Darlington is about racing the track—especially in the Southern 500, which starts in the daytime and finishes at night.
“At Darlington, you're in control of your destiny quite a bit with the decisions you make and where you're positioning yourself,” Jones said. “It's a super temperature-sensitive place, and even getting a cloud and qualifying is a massive advantage. When you lose 15 degrees of air temperature, that's a major change in the track, and it feels like it gains a ton of grip. It seems like you can run a bit harder as the track cools down, and the pace really picks up.”
For drivers, Daytona is about finding a spot in line. Darlington is about finding the line, which shifts as the track takes on new temperatures and rubber buildup.
“The daytime line, you tend to run pretty high up the racetrack on both ends,” Jones said. “Right against the wall. Sometimes, when the night comes, you can switch around and get the bottom rolling. That's the part I enjoy: You still have that opportunity to go run up high, but the bottom comes around too, where you can get your car working pretty good and make a lot of passes.”
Many NASCAR tracks are less abrasive than Darlington, giving drivers a chance to stay out during a round of pit stops and gain track position. But with the tire wear at Darlington, the field would eat those drivers up. Jones said with the current state of the track surface, three or four laps is enough to need new tires if a caution comes out and everyone pits.
Drivers can’t prevent tire wear at Darlington, but they can manipulate it with the way they drive. Jones said the better shape the tires are in, the better they are—literally.
“You want to keep the tire round,” Jones said. “That tire isn't round anymore if you're using too much steering and you're folding it over, or if you’re making it skip across the track, or if you're too much throttle and doing the same to the rear tires. That tire's not going to be very happy. But if you're keeping them round, you're probably keeping them pretty happy.”
Once drivers get good at keeping the tires round, they can actually wear them in certain areas to make the car handle better.
“Sometimes you get a feel for which way your car is trending, whether it be loose or tight, and you can influence that with how you're driving that run. Whether you're using up a little bit of extra rear tire if you're tight, or trying to run the right front hard and build up some air. At the end of the day, you can't overpower sometimes what your balance is, but you can definitely influence the way that your balance is going to trend as you go.”
Jones grew up racing short tracks around the United States, where tire conservation is key and track surfaces are old, abrasive, and sensitive—just like Darlington.
“Darlington was a place that I went to and felt comfortable that pretty quickly,” Jones said. “The biggest thing is realizing how hard you can push. Growing up, the tracks that I ran, it was a lot of racing the track. It was about conserving your equipment. Darlington is a lot of that: If you can get through the day, your car is clean, you've made it better all night, and your pit crew's done a good job, you're probably going to be in contention.”
The NASCAR Playoffs: Hail-Marys, by Design
Modern NASCAR is designed for anything-could-happen tension, from qualifying for the playoffs to winning the championship. Jones is confident he can be in the mix at Daytona and Darlington, but he knows he’s got his work cut out for him—just like all those other drivers.
“Unfortunately, we just haven't had the speed we've wanted [at Legacy this year],” Jones said. “But Darlington has been pretty good for me, even in times in my career where the cars just haven't been what we've needed.
“To say it's not going to be challenging to contend for a win would just be a lie. But Darlington still gives you a little bit of ability to work the race out and be in contention, even if you don't have the best car.”
