BROOKLYN, Mich. — Michigan-native Erik Jones had a season-best result for Legacy Motor Club, finishing second in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan Int’l Speedway.
With Jones second and Bubba Wallace third behind winner Denny Hamlin, Toyota earned its second straight top-three sweep.
Despite his best finish of the season, Jones was disappointed with the result.
“It is a nice day. It is disappointing in some ways. To have the car we had; it’s not we fluked into second, we were running up here all day,” Jones said. “We had a fast Dollar Tree Camry. It just didn’t work perfectly. You need everything to go well. Restarts got chaotic at the end, and the last one didn’t work out for us, and I had to pick through traffic.
“By time I got up there, the race was over and Denny (Hamlin) was gone. A lot of positives to take away. The car was really fast. I couldn’t ask much more out of it for balance. We will work on it, and if we keep bringing cars like this, we will win races soon.”
• Point leader Tyler Reddick was involved in a nine-car accident and finished 35th. As a result, race winner Hamlin cut his point lead to 51 points with 11 races remaining in the regular season. A winner of five races this season, Reddick won the first stage on Sunday before he was involved in the crash.
“I felt like we had really good speed. We were set up with a good restart to get second there, and maybe race for the lead there, and just an all-around bummer,” Reddick said. “I wanted to come in here and have a good points day. We had really, really good speed yesterday and it showed again today. All-in-all, it’s a bummer. It’s a race I felt like we could have won, got away from us.
“All year long, we’ve done a really good job at staying out of messes like this, so it’s unfortunate to have it happen.”
• Spire Motorsports continued its consistent performance with Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez finishing fifth and sixth, respectively.
Through 15 races, Hocevar is seventh in the standings and Suarez is ninth. Both have won a race.
“We definitely had a Chevrolet that could contend all day long,” Suarez said. “This No. 7 NationGuards Chevrolet team did a great job and I’m just super proud of this group. I felt like we had a top-five car on the short run and a top-10 car on the long run.
“Our strength was definitely the short-middle part of the run. After three laps, I would fire off really quickly. I feel like on the short run, I was a little bit better than the No. 11 (Denny Hamlin, race winner). Once we lost control of the race, I knew it was going to be a little tough. Overall, just really proud of this team and everyone at Spire Motorsports.”
• Joey Logano was the top finishing Ford driver in eighth. As a result, Logano is 17th in points and just three markers behind teammate Austin Cindric for the 16th spot. The top 16 drivers advance to the playoffs after the 26-race regular season.
“The grind is gonna be all the way to the end here. We’ve got to keep having days like this and sort of stacking points,” Logano said. “We were 30 back a couple weeks ago. I don’t know where we are now, but we’ve got to keep doing this. We can’t afford to have bad races. We’ve got to keep grinding out points here and there where we can.”
• Kyle Larson came on strong during the final stage of the race and finished fourth. The Hendrick Motorsports driver and reigning series champion is sixth in the standings despite having not won this season.
“I don’t know if we just finally got the adjustments right or the track conditions came to me a little bit,” Larson said. “I just had a really poor restart there and got ate up, stuck in the middle and fell back somewhere between 13th-15th. Thankfully, my No. 5 HendrickCars.com Chevy was good that last run to be able to drive back to fourth. I just wish I would have executed it better and we probably would have had a better shot at finishing second or maybe even be able to race Denny (Hamlin, race winner). It looked like he was really fast and drove away from the field, which is tough to do with this package.”
• Only 26 points now separate 14th-place Shane Van Gisbergen from 17th place Logano with the top-16 drivers advancing to The Chase which begin Sept. 6 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway.
• Austin Hill finished 20th in the No. 33 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
“It was a learning day. The way the Cup car reacts to the air and how you use the pedals to carry momentum are so different than what I’m used to in the O’Reilly car,” Hill said. “On the initial fire off, our Rebel Bourbon Chevrolet lost the front end on entry. The car would get loose at times and then tight at times, but anytime I got to the right side of someone, I would get immediately loose on entry.
“We went for spin towards the end but kept it off the wall without damage. Proud of the guys for sticking together and grinding out a top-20 finish.”
