James Thomas | NASCAR Studios
CONCORD, N.C. — Two points. When the checkered flag flew on Saturday afternoon, that’s all that separated Brandon Jones from elimination in the NASCAR Xfinity Series Playoffs.
That barrier proved strong enough as Jones wheeled the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to a seventh-place finish at the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course, narrowly advancing to the Round of 8 in the Xfinity Series’ postseason battle.
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Jones battled through multiple late-race restarts as the Drive for the Cure 250 wound into overtime, his nerves rattling as each lap wound down and spotter Drew Herring fed him all the right info. In the end, he finished two spots ahead of ninth-place Ryan Sieg, who wound up on the other side of the elimination line by that thin margin.
“I’m an adrenaline junkie and that was definitely some adrenaline for sure to keep listening to those numbers and it keeps getting tighter and tighter every restart,” Jones said.
Jones, in his swan-song season for Joe Gibbs Racing, wanted Herring to keep him updated on points throughout the entire event. That proved helpful — if perhaps a little more stressful, too.
“Man, I think at first it was good to hear. And then once it got down to the wire, like Drew’s voice escalated on the radio a little bit, and I’m just thinking, ‘Man, let’s just not have any lockups or anything crazy,’” Jones said. “And that’s what we had to do, man. We did our job today.”
The team, headed by crew chief Jeff Meendering, opted for stage points in Stage 2 and snagged the stage victory, resulting in an additional 10 points for Jones total. He needed all of them by the time the round concluded.
“I think as far as coming into this race, and being just extremely solid, did a phenomenal job of flipping that stage and getting that stage win,” Jones said. “That’s probably really what saved our butts a little bit was getting that stage win to just have a couple of extra points there to go into it.
“I mean, like I said, I don’t think we could have played this out any better.”
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Jones now sets his sights on a run to the Championship 4. He finished sixth in the final points rundown in 2020 and seventh in 2021. This year, Jones’ lone victory came at Martinsville Speedway, which also serves as the elimination race that decides the four drivers who will compete for the Xfinity Series Championship.
He likes his chances.
“I know we talked about how close it was today, but it doesn’t matter now,” Jones said. “It all resets and it goes down to back to everyone’s equal, so I think that these next couple of tracks are the key to getting to Phoenix for me, man. I’m so good at the rest of the mile-and-a-halves. The short track, Martinsville, we’ve proven ourselves there. We’ve won. So there’s so many tracks that we can go out here and heck, we can we can have a couple more wins before we get to Phoenix, I think.
“Get me to Phoenix. I’ll have a good time there. And maybe we’ll be getting a championship.”
Jones sits seventh in the reseeded standings, 22 points behind Justin Allgaier for the transfer spot ahead of the three-race Round of 8. The penultimate playoff round begins Saturday, Oct. 15 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway (3 p.m. ET, NBC, NBC Sports App, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).