Erik Jones on recovery from back injury suffered at Talladega: 'Pretty much 100%'

NASCAR driver Erik Jones suffered one of the scarier wrecks of the season when he was involved in a pileup of Toyotas that saw him slam into the outside barrier at Talladega head on back on April 21.

He was diagnosed with a compression fracture of a lower vertebra in his back following the incident, and he was kept off the track for two weeks as a result.

He simply hasn’t been the same since he returned, and he opened up on his recent plight with RACER’s Kelly Crandall. It isn’t due to his health, which he says is “pretty much 100%.”

“I feel good,” Erik Jones said at Iowa Speedway this weekend. “There’s still some occasional pain here and there, but it’s nothing a lot different than what I had before with racing. So, I feel good and am doing normal stuff.”

Jones has ground to make up this season if he hopes to make the playoffs. He has yet to win a race and currently stands outside the points cutoff by 159 points, sitting in 26th place in the Cup Series standings.

Things simply haven’t gone well since he made it back behind the wheel.

Erik Jones has one 18th place finish, three 19ths, a 26th and a 32nd since returning to the fold. The 32nd place finish was his most recent, this weekend at Iowa.

“I came back and it feels like nothing has been good since,” Jones told Crandall. “Fortunately — or unfortunately — that’s shared across the board. The 42 [John Hunter Nemechek] has been struggling as well since then.

“It’s hard when you sit out a couple of weeks and you don’t know the direction things are going and you come back, and it’s different. We have to get better, in general, but we have to unload better. That’s been our big struggle.”

That Erik Jones is struggling is perfectly understandable. His wreck was vicious and would take a toll on just about anyone, mentally if not physically as well.

The accident occurred after the seven remaining Toyotas came to pit road together as part of a plan to get a jump on the rest of the field late in the race at Talladega. Racing in a single-file line, the group stacked up going into Turns 3 and 4. Bubba Wallace, Denny Hamlin and Nemechek were involved along with Jones.

Jones hit the outside barrier head-on and was released soon thereafter from the infield care center. He told Regan Smith of FOX Sports at the time that he was a “little sore,” but he’ll “be alright.”

Obviously his diagnosis of a more serious back injury would follow.

In any case, Erik Jones continues to look for the right buttons to press as the playoff picture gets tighter and the season shrinks. The good news is his physical health no longer seems to be an issue.