They say honesty is the best policy, so let’s all be honest.
You probably had written off Brandon Jones as a non-factor for the title at some point before the NASCAR Xfinity Series reached Phoenix Raceway this year, let alone considered him the best driver in the field.
Six laps into the season at Daytona International Speedway, Jones was caught up in the first accident of the season. Sure, it’s a superspeedway and it’s not like Jones could have done anything to avoid it, but it was hard to watch him doing interviews outside the infield care center afterward without shaking your head and saying, ‘that guy will never catch a break.’
He couldn’t catch a break in his first two seasons in the series at Richard Childress Racing. He couldn’t catch one at the end of his first tenure at Joe Gibbs Racing when his own teammates wrecked him out of a spot in the 2022 Championship 4. He couldn’t catch a break at JR Motorsports, missing the playoffs twice.
Through three weeks this year, it looked to be more of the same. The crash at Daytona, a fine 13th-place run at Atlanta Motor Speedway and a 30th-place finish at Circuit of the Americas buried Jones deep in the standings to start the season.
Then, Jones finished third at Phoenix and was four-wide for the lead in overtime with a pair of former Cup Series winners and the defending Xfinity champion.
Jones added back-to-back top-10 finishes in Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Homestead-Miami Speedway. On paper, his hot streak ended at Martinsville Speedway with a 22nd-place finish. In reality, Jones was on the front row of an overtime restart and was in line for a fourth-place run. Then, Sammy Smith pulled the NASCAR equivalent of flipping over the board game before you’re about to lose and ruining the night for everyone.
When he won on April 5 at Darlington Raceway, Jones snapping his 98-race winless streak was frequently called a popular win among drivers and fans. But nobody dared to call it surprising.
Jones had been knocking on the door of a win for five weeks. His crew chief Sam Spicali had been beating on that same door, screaming at the top of his lungs for someone to open up for over a year. Spicali was the man who guided Sheldon Creed to multiple runner-up finishes last season without a win.
Jones gave credit to Spicali post race for quickly adjusting to his driving style. He also shouted out his coaches at Toyota, former drivers Blake Koch and Trevor Bayne, for his simulation prep throughout the season. But above all else, what the No. 20 team — Spicali, Koch, Bayne and beyond — has given Jones is unwavering belief.
“It’s because everyone believes in me,” Jones said in the Darlington post-race press conference. “It’s infectious. I can feel it. I show up to the track, and I have no doubt that my crew chief is sitting on that pit box thinking I’m the best driver in the field. My pit crew thinks I’m the best driver in the field. My coaches think I’m the best driver in the field. All of that is just fueling the fire to go forward.
“We’re doing this whole bounce around session right now of ‘You’re the best’ and ‘No, you’re the best.’ Nobody is saying ‘I’m the best.’ Everybody is lifting each other up and pumping each other up.”
So is it possible that Jones is among the championship favorites? Absolutely, but his stock will really take off if he can keep consistent over the next few weeks.
Jones has been strong in recent weeks on tracks he’s known for having success at. He already had prior wins at Phoenix, Martinsville and Darlington while averaging a top-10 finish at Las Vegas and Homestead.
In the next 10 races, his best tracks by average finish are Bristol Motor Speedway (12.7) and Charlotte Motor Speedway (12.6). The other eight include a pair of new tracks to the series and five tracks where Jones’ average finish is worse than 15.
With that in mind, a good resume of runs over the next two or three months would probably be even more impressive than what he’s done since the start of March. And from the sounds of it, everyone on the No. 20 Toyota team believes it’s possible.
James Krause joined Frontstretch in March 2024 as a contributor. Krause was born and raised in Illinois and graduated from Northern Illinois University. He currently works in La Crosse, Wisconsin as a local sports reporter, including local short track racing. Outside of racing, Krause loves to keep up with football, music, anime and video games.