JONES LEADS TOYOTA IN WEATHER-AFFECTED RACE AT ROAD AMERICA
Brandon Jones scored in 14th to lead Toyota
ELKHART LAKE, Wisconsin (August 8, 2020) – Brandon Jones finished 14th to lead Toyota in the Henry 180 at Road America on Saturday afternoon.
Toyota Racing Post-Race Recap
NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)
Road America – Elkhart Lake, Wisc.
Race 18 of 33 – 182.2 miles, 45 laps
TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS
1st, Austin Cindric*
2nd, AJ Allmendinger*
3rd, Chase Briscoe*
4th, Kaz Grala*
5th, Andy Lally*
14th, BRANDON JONES
16th, HARRISON BURTON
17th, JOSH BILICKI
22nd, STEPHEN LEICHT
23rd, RILEY HERBST
26th, JESSE IWUJI
33rd, SCOTT HECKERT
36th, CHAD FINCHUM
*non-Toyota driver
TOYOTA QUOTES
BRANDON JONES, No. 19 Toyota Service Centers Toyota Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing
Finishing Position: 14th
How was the race for you today overall?
“At the start of the race, I had a lot of confidence coming into it. For about three weeks, I would say or so, we ran laps on the simulator at TRD and that was really the best I’ve felt coming into the weekend. Was running probably sixth-place lap times to kickoff the race really good and I was probably running about 80 percent just trying to figure out for the final stage where I could possibly push my braking zone a little bit more and things like that. That way when it came down to the end of the race, I knew exactly how far I could push it. Then the rain hit, of course, and I have to figure out how to get some laps in the rain. That’s kind of what led to our day going backwards a little bit. I was just trying to be safe, to take it easy. I knew at the end of the race it was probably going to go back to dry, which it did. I think at that point we just got so far back in the pack with the rain that it was kind of hard to recover from it. Still did our job in a way, I never really ran off track. I never put ourselves in a terrible position at the end of the race. There’s still come good positives to come out of it. I still learned a bunch in the first half of the race as well. We’ll see. We’ve got some more crazy road courses coming up so maybe this is a little bit of a momentum booster going into those.”
Is it beneficial to go from one road course right to another?
“I think it is. Any time that you stop doing anything and then try and pick it back up in a week or even a month, I think it’s pretty difficult. It helps a bunch and right now we’ve been going to the go-kart track and wearing those out a bunch. We’re doing a bunch of things to just be focused purely on road course racing. If we were to go oval racing for a while and then come back and do that, it would be hard to switch it back on for me anyways just not being 100 percent used to it. I know I’ve been in the series awhile now, but still not something I grew up doing through my racing career. Something that we’re getting a heck of a lot better at I think. This is something that takes time and there’s a bunch of schools you can do and oval racing isn’t like that at all. Oval racing has no schools or anything so definitely a different style of racing.”
What is the hardest part of racing in the rain?
“My biggest thing is you can’t see anything. The rooster tails are incredible behind the cars and there’s people blowing by you and you can’t see a half a car length in front of you. If anybody wrecks in between that, you’re not going to see smoke or nothing. I think to be honest; timid-ness is the issue with me on the rain. If you can’t see, you’re not going to be very confident.”
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