Legacy Motor Club to appeal NASCAR penalty against No. 43 team from St. Louis

Legacy Motor Club informed NASCAR Tuesday it will appeal the penalty levied against the No. 43 team of Erik Jones following the Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR).

NASCAR issued an L1-level penalty for a modification to the greenhouse resulting in Jones being docked 60 points as well as five NASCAR playoff points. In addition, NASCAR suspended Jones’ crew chief, Dave Elenz, for two races, while fining him $75,000.

In the aftermath of the penalty and a P32 finish in this past Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, Jones slipped to 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 16 races.

Jones addressed the penalty and the season “gone wrong” with Sportsnaut last Tuesday, and was quite candid in his assessment. He alluded to the issue on pit road at WWTR in which front tire changer Thomas Hatcher tripped and fell, suffering a concussion. As a result, Hatcher missed the race at Sonoma.

“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.”

Legacy Motor Club’s Erik Jones has lots of ground to make up

He added: “It’s obviously unfortunate. 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 10 races remaining until the playoffs, the plan is simple for Jones: find a way into victory lane — something he’s done three times in 234 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.”