AVONDALE, Ariz. – After a tough start to the 2025 NASCAR Xfinity Series season, the Joe Gibbs Racing veteran Brandon Jones finished his Saturday (March 8) at Phoenix Raceway with an encouraging and morale-boosting third-place finish – his first top-five effort since Charlotte Motor Speedway last May.
“It was a really good, really consistent day for us, execution was on time,” Jones told Frontstretch post-race. “My goals were top 10 by stage one, top five by stage two and to win the race in stage three and I almost ticked every one of those boxes there towards the end.”
Jones opened the 2025 season with a fifth-lap wreck and a 37th place at Daytona International Speedway, finished 13th at Atlanta Motor Speedway then a 30th-place effort at Circuit of the Americas last weekend.
“We didn’t start this year off great, right, we haven’t had many good finishes so far.” Jones continued. “We had a lot of speed at COTA just, had some mistakes on my end that got us a really bad finish.
And while he would have loved a sixth Xfinity Series victory in his 306th career start and a first race win since Martinsville Speedway in April 2022, Jones knew a solid finish in the desert and that all-important momentum was crucial to kick-starting his sputtering season.
“Half of me wanted it to go green just to get a good finish at the end and half of me wanted to re-rack and have a chance like I just did to go and win the race,” he added. “And it sometimes can go one of two ways on those restarts and picking the bottom like that. You just never know if the guys are gonna get good enough restarts to put you three wide in a bad situation. My launches all day were really, really good. My restarts were great. Pit road was great. So, so close, but, but just, just came up a little short.”
Jones also had a terrific view of the compelling two-lap battle between Justin Allgaier and winner Aric Almirola.
“The guys were leaning on each other so hard,” Jones described. “It’s basically two Cup drivers, right, going at it. Justin’s practically a cup driver, so they were racing hard.”
On the final overtime restart, Jones attempted to snatch the lead and win, yet wound up two spots shy of a trip to victory lane.
“I think I got a little too greedy, honestly, I think I tried to use a little too much track up in one and two,” he noted. “I kind of saw the opening. I’m like, that’s it. I gotta get there. I gotta take it. It’s been a while since I’ve had that close to winning the race here like that at the front. So, there’s a lot to extract from this one, a lot to learn from it.”
But despite coming up just a little short at Phoenix, Jones was upbeat about the upcoming stretch of races noting: “We’re in the stretch right now. We’re getting ready to knock out some really, really good tracks for not only myself but this organization in general. It’s kind of hard to start in a deficit and, and mentally work your way out of that and get back to what we just did today and, just goes to show all the hard work I’m putting in is paying off.”
But Jones held on for the podium finish while Almirola and Bowman dueled for the victory with Almirola emerging triumphant.
Danny starts his 12th year with Frontstretch in 2018, writing the Tuesday signature column 5 Points To Ponder. An English transplant living in San Francisco, by way of New York City, he’s had an award-winning marketing career with some of the biggest companies sponsoring sports. Working with racers all over the country, his freelance writing has even reached outside the world of racing to include movie screenplays.