(Photo: Mitchell Richtmyre | The Podium Finish)
Brandon Jones has entered the next chapter of his NASCAR career.
After five seasons with Joe Gibbs Racing, the 26-year-old has joined JR Motorsports to drive the No. 9 Chevrolet Camaro in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Nine races in, the change has been all that the Atlanta, Georgia native could have asked for.
“It’s been exactly what I wanted it to be — different,” Jones told The Podium Finish. “The team, the way that the organization operates, the way that the cars drive [and] the way they feel … everything about it is a complete reset. That’s really what I was looking for.”
Under the Toyota umbrella, Jones started to feel passed over. He wants to eventually race on Sundays and started to sense that dream slip away. With young Cup drivers like Christopher Bell and most recently Ty Gibbs, as well as John Hunter Nemechek, Sammy Smith and Corey Heim waiting in the wings, a Cup ride for Jones didn’t appear tangible.
The time seemed right for Jones to make a move, he said.
“I knew that there was people in line before me at Toyota to maybe get to the next spot, which is the Cup Series,” Jones explained. “I feel like the opportunity here at Chevrolet was very, very large, very broad. There’s obviously way more Chevrolets out there in the field.
“And then to come over here with Dale [Earnhardt Jr.] to try to get some advice from Dale, some knowledge from him with as much as he’s been around the sport. I just thought all that stuff was going to lead to some success here.”
Jones found his way to victory lane five times at JGR, notably winning three times in 2020 en route to a sixth-place finish in points. He won his only race of 2022 in the spring at Martinsville Speedway and seemed headed toward another in the fall before contact from Ty Gibbs on the final lap sent him spinning into the wall. A win would’ve sent Jones into the Championship 4.
Switching from JGR to JRM hasn’t been an easy process, Jones said. He had to transfer notes, get new seat fittings and learn the differences within the shop and the race team.
On the manufacturer side, Jones has begun working with Josh Wise, a former Cup Series driver turned trainer. Wise is a resource that all JRM drivers, as well as many other Chevrolet drivers, are utilizing.
(Photo: Riley Thompson | The Podium Finish)
“The Josh Wise program is incredible. I give a lot of credit to Josh and Scott Speed,” Jones said. “It’s something that no other manufacturer has is that resource there to kind of lean on. They’ve helped probably all of our cars out a bunch.
“I feel like I’m on a much tighter schedule. Every single day of the week, I’ve got places to be and activities to be doing, and so it keeps you busy … Some of it’s not even racing-related. Some of it’s just team-building exercises or certain things like that.”
JRM paired Jones with Jason Burdett, a veteran crew chief from Arkport, New York. Before working with Jones, Burdett spent seven seasons calling the shots for Justin Allgaier and the No. 7 car, winning 16 races and making the Championship 4 five times.
While Burdett slid over to the No. 9 car, JRM hired Jim Pohlman to work with Allgaier. Taylor Moyer switched from Sam Mayer to Josh Berry and the team hired Mardy Lindley to pair with Mayer. Mike Bumgarner, who previously worked with Mayer, got promoted to director of competition.
With Noah Gragson leaving the team to take a Cup Series ride with LEGACY Motor Club, it made sense to shuffle the crew chief alignment, Burdett said.
(Photo: Dylan Nadwodny | The Podium Finish)
“It was a good opportunity to do it because we were going to have a bunch of changes,” Burdett said. “We ended up with two new crew chiefs, one new driver, a bunch of new people within each team, so that was a good time to get Justin [Allgaier] a new person.”
Jones said that he’s enjoyed working with Burdett so far, but he wants to results to show for it. The No. 9 team has just one top-10 finish so far, which came with a fifth-place result at Martinsville.
But that hasn’t been for a lack of speed. In the closing laps of the season opener at Daytona International Speedway, Jones spun down the backstretch with help from teammate Josh Berry. A week later at Auto Club Speedway, he spun with 65 laps to go. At Circuit of the Americas, he cut a tire early and could never recover. At Richmond Raceway, he spun late in the race after leading 24 laps.
The team has struggled to piece together clean and complete races, resulting in a 14th-place points position.
“We’ve been in a bad place at a bad time, we’ve had crazy mechanical issues happen and then I’ve put ourselves in a bad spot once or twice,” Jones said. “At the end of the day, we just got to try to execute at a top-10 level at 100%. I don’t think we need to go out here and try any harder or try any less. There’s been times that you want to just finish these races and try to get finishes, but I think when you try to do that, you put yourself in bad situations.
“[Burdett and I] knew it was going to take us about five or six races to kind of figure that out as well. I didn’t quite expect to come in here and just jump to the moon and be the number one guy right off the bat just because it’s all brand new to all of us. It’s not just me. So once we get rolling, I think you’ll really notice the difference.”
(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
Burdett considered the team’s strong run at Martinsville as the first box checked off. After a 14th-place finish at Talladega Superspeedway, he hopes the next stretch of races starting at Dover Motor Speedway can get the ball rolling for the No. 9 team.
“Now that we got that first top five out of the way, I think we can build on that,” Burdett said. “Then we can start working on that last little bit of speed we need to potentially — not contend for just one win — but contend for a lot of wins.
“If we hit that at kind of the right time going into Playoffs and we kind of pull all that stuff together, I feel those tracks that are in the Playoffs are good tracks for him. I think we can go in there and make some noise and put ourselves in a position to have an opportunity at Phoenix.”
A key to success for Jones is the family-oriented culture at JRM. He’s spent time at Millbridge Speedway with Burdett and his son, Ethan. He said that his primary sponsor, Menards, aligns well with JRM’s values.
With the Earnhardt family’s blessing and belief, the goal for Jones is to pull it all together, build momentum and find victory lane.
“There’s a lot of trust and a lot of belief in what I’m capable of doing inside the car, which is a great confidence booster,” Jones said. “If you took a bunch of stage points and got a top 10 at the end of the day, you’re going to work your way up the points … It’s almost like short term, we need that to get the momentum back to turn it around, and then we can start attacking for those wins.”
