Erik Jones responds to massive NASCAR penalty, amid season 'gone wrong'

The 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season has been one to forget for Erik Jones.

After being issued an L1-level penalty for a modification to the greenhouse during this past Sunday’s Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway, resulting in him being docked 60 points as well as five NASCAR playoff points, Jones sits 30th in the points standings. In year three of driving the historic No. 43 car for Legacy Motor Club, Jones has recorded just two top 10s in 15 races.

Jones addressed the penalty and the season “gone wrong” with Sportsnaut Tuesday, and was quite candid in his assessment. He alluded to the issue on pit road in which front tire changer Thomas Hatcher tripped and fell, suffering a concussion. As a result, Hatcher will miss this Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway.

“I mean, man, it’s hard to pinpoint one thing, you know,” Jones said. “… I think it’s just everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. Like, even taking performance out of it. I feel [the Coca-Cola 600 at] Charlotte was a really good day for us and then we had a radiator issue. Then obviously, Gateway, I think it was going to be an OK day and then we had the issue on pit road.”

Erik Jones will be without crew chief for next 2 races

As for the penalty, Jones said he doesn’t believe it was anything intentional on his team’s part. His crew chief, Dave Elenz, paid a price, however, as NASCAR suspended him for the next two races, while fining him $75,000.

“It’s obviously unfortunate,” Jones said. “I don’t know what the plan of attack is… Hopefully we can find one. It’s a bummer for a lot of reasons. Dave sitting out is not something we want. The points penalty and fine is not something we need either.

“We got to figure out what went wrong there. I don’t think it was anything intentional on our part. I need to dive in there more with them to figure out what happened.”

With 11 races remaining until the playoffs, the plan is simple for Jones: find a way into victory lane — something he’s done three times in 233 career starts.

“We were close to that point anyway,” Jones said. “We have 11 races to do it. I think we can, if we hit it right, and we did it last year. We’re going to try to stay strong and push hard for it.”