Erik Jones wins NASCAR’s Truck series title

When Erik Jones and Tyler Reddick take center stage as the opening act of Ford Championship Weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway, the spotlight will shine squarely on the two 19-year-olds, one of whom will become the youngest-ever NASCAR Camping World Truck Series champion, barring a Matt Crafton miracle.

Jones said his parents have never thought about that, and, “Neither have I”.

Jones made five starts in Busch’s truck in 2013 and earned his first career national series victory with a win at Phoenix.

“I think a lot of it was just being with a great team here in Kyle Busch Motorsports and bringing great Tundras to the race track every week”, Jones said. Crucially however Erik Jones was calmly circulating comfortably in the top ten, which was all he needed to do to clinch the title. As a result the watchword of the night was prudence, doing just enough to make sure of the championship without getting carried away and getting caught up in a battle for a race win just for the sake of it. “There’s nothing greater than to have that feeling”.

There’s nothing like a championship to validate the efforts of a young driver – or a team owner, for that matter. Dillon moved up to the NASCAR’s second-tier Xfinity Series the following year.

Jones came into the season finale with a strong points lead, but one not so big that it couldn’t easily have all come undone at the hands of a disastrous early retirement. He was a mid-race replacement for Denny Hamlin at Bristol when Hamlin injured his neck, and he raced the last two weeks for suspended driver Matt Kenseth. Nemechek managed to get by Crafton a few times throughout the race to lead a total of 24 laps. “It’s fun to see our, mine and Samantha’s (Busch, wife), organization run like that and compete for championships and to ultimately score our first driver’s championship this week would be pretty special”.

Later that year, at the Snowball Derby in Pensacola, Jones raced door-to-door with Busch and ended up beating the NASCAR star to the finish line.

The youngest champion in series history at 19 years, 5 months, 21 days, Jones has been earmarked for a meteoric ascent to the top level of NASCAR racing.

“The six wins, all the laps we led”.

They got it done Friday.

“Absolutely, I think the Xfinity Series is completely necessary”, Jones said of JGR’s plans for him. Joe Nemechek, who won a Busch Series race at Homestead later in 1997, named his son, who was born after the fatal crash, after John Nemechek.

John Hunter Nemechek paid tribute to his late uncle and namesake by racing a No. 8 Chevrolet Silverado – his uncle’s vehicle number – in the finale. Other top-five finishers included Ben Kennedy in fourth and Timothy Peters in fifth.