NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 7, 2026

Brandon Jones

Press Conference

An Interview with:

THE MODERATOR: We are now joined by the race winner of tonight's race, Brandon Jones.

Brandon, congratulations. We'll get right to questions.

Q. With the way this year has gone, how does it feel to cap off the season with a performance like that?

BRANDON JONES: Yeah, Sam McAulay, he's the crew chief on the 20 group with us. He's data, analytical driven. He's got so many things. I think he learned that from the Cup side when he was there.

I saw there was a sheet he developed. It was showing kind of car potential for the day for all the races that we've been to so far this year. You take out of consideration what kind of happened during the day and look at sheer speed, it was like eight of these events this year I thought we could have won at.

There's been so many things that's gone wrong for us this year unfortunately. We've done some of it to ourselves, we've also been a product of racing, too.

I don't think by any means we've been the dominant team. I think that's pretty obvious. But we're right there at it almost every week to whenever somebody can make mistakes and we can capitalize on some stuff.

Tonight nobody even really made a mistake. I think we executed the race phenomenally, really. The pit strategy was really good, the call to stay out was really good until later, and we caught the caution at the right time, and adjustments were great. Sometimes you have nights like these where you want to capitalize on it.

You're always thinking about the win. I didn't put a lot of emphasis on the win. I had an agenda of my own. I wanted to monitor where our teammates were in points because I wanted to finish the highest JGR guy in the points. I think this win should have done it for us.

Brent got a couple more stage points than I did for owners. I'll have to see how it netted out. Bonus points is worth a lot, I think.

It was definitely awesome to kind of end the year on a high note like this. It's fluctuated, been up and down all year long. We've had plenty of hard conversations in the shop about what we have to do better as a team and everything.

It's just kind of cool because when you have the hard moments, can you put them into action like this, it makes you feel even that much better.

Q. Throughout the final stage, when you were going back and forth with Carson, take me through that whole process of the moves you were pulling but also being respectful.

BRANDON JONES: Yeah, I mean, that was the hard part for sure. I put myself in those guys' shoes a little bit tonight as well. I think, man, if you have somebody that doesn't really matter like myself, do you really race 'em that much harder, you put yourself in a bad situation.

I never put anybody in a tough situation tonight, in my opinion. Me and the 1 car raced each other aggressively but clean. Heck, I had one moment, I could have done that earlier in the race. I didn't really like the slide I was going. I hit the brake, let him drive right back by me. I didn't want to slide up in front of him and put him in a situation that he hits me, hits the fence, takes him out. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but you hate to see that in the Truck Series last night. I don't want to be that guy ever.

You can ask all these drivers, I pride myself on being a really clean racer. I can't stand the aggressive, dirty racing stuff. I've lost, honestly, so many races because I'm just trying to be clean out there the entire time.

It sometimes bites you, but you have to kind of make those decisions yourself, too, know what you want to do morally right and wrong. It's part of your comfort zone as much as you want to take it.

I thought the slider was great. I thought it was clean. I didn't put him in a situation that he had to hit us or anything, take himself out of the race.

I had to get in front of him because track position is huge. If you break momentum a little bit, it's so hard, especially at this track, to kind of regain it and get back going.

Q. The racing etiquette, you want the win, they're running for the championship. Do they race you with any more urgency and desperation? As it gets intense, is there a point where you feel like you might lift a little bit with consideration for the situation those guys are in?

BRANDON JONES: Yeah, I mean, it happened tonight early on in the race. The 7 car, he started probably not exactly where he wanted to. He was making a good charge up through the field there that first stage. He threw a pretty aggressive slider on me. I had a big moment of, like, do I stay on the gas or lift and hit the brake.

It's early on right there. I lifted and hit the brake. We had a quick chat on the radio. It's a good way to get yourself wrecked early.

I was surprised by a couple of the decisions they were making. I thought they were pretty aggressive. But I know the urgency to get to the front, too. I know how much better the car handles when you can get it out front.

There's a lot of incentives doing that. You just got to be smart about those decisions. You don't want to be your own worst enemy out there.

I was surprised by that one. For the most part, no. All of us really did a pretty good job tonight of racing each other pretty clean. Nobody ever really put each other in a situation that was going to, like, get the other wrecked, in my opinion, that I could see, anyways, from my vantage point.

Yeah, I thought it was hard racing. We threw some big sliders on each other, some aggressive side drafting. That's perfect. That's exactly what you want to see. That's what I enjoy racing, what we did tonight, having those big separation slide jobs and stuff, but giving each other some space and room to do it, too.

Q. You mentioned the pit strategy. What clicked in stage three?

BRANDON JONES: The restart, the very last restart we had, it definitely went our way. We were slowly making good gains on our car. It's like the front end wasn't really turning exactly like I wanted it to. There's a lot of tracks that this applies to. If you start working too aggressively on that, you lose all your rear grip. I knew my strength tonight was having more rear grip than the field kind of later in the run.

We did a good job of slowly working up to it, slowly adjusting on the car. Pit crew tonight was absolutely on fire. That's who pitted for Kaden yesterday, got them the win there. They did a fantastic job. It's important to keep firing off of pit road, closer to the front.

That restart worked out. We had a quick discussion about I had the preference of going bottom or top. The lanes were pretty equal right there. I was like I think I'm leaning towards the top. I couldn't get anything tonight to work for me on the bottom.

Had a great restart. I came off of two or so I think almost in third or second, was able to really stay with the 1 car. That was what was important. Surprised myself a little bit because I had shots to doing that tonight. I thought the 41 and a few of those guys early in the race, I'm like I just don't get it, I don't know where they're beating me. It looked like overall grip was so much better than what I had.

As the race kind of went there, because I couldn't fire off as good, I was able to save the tire a little bit better. These super long runs we get at Homestead, it played into my favor big-time.

Q. What is the connect for these styles of tracks? Is it a preference, just being able to hang it out there? What do you like so much?

BRANDON JONES: Man, this one has been very tough. I had to go in the archives a little bit to figure out my last few really good races I've had here. I think it's when we had those double weekends. You remember when we were doing those races? It might have been doing COVID. I'm not really too sure. Maybe '19, '20, somewhere in there.

I think I finished second in one of those races. But ever since then, I have been top 10 capable, but not fully figuring out how to get it done here.

It's pretty cool that we just kind of tied a lot of things together. I even think coming away with this one, I know we were really good at the end, but I think there could have been some gains made to the car to make it even better. I'm sure everyone feels that when they win here. I think it's one of the lowest grip tracks we have on the entire schedule. Almost a 10th a second a corner. There's a lot of management involved in it.

I think to your point there, I think what I've gotten really good at is studying a lot of data we have now on our simulators and stuff. Just understanding how much you can overslip the car, abuse the car early on, still make up for it at the end of the race.

I see some guys that take off faster in the beginning, but they pay for it long-term.

If you have long runs like this, it's going to be difficult.

Q. Early in the race you looked like you were searching for a line. In turn one you seemed to get loose and were really close to the wall. At what point did you figure out the line and know you could get to the front?

BRANDON JONES: Yeah, I mean, to me, the line here is so unique. One thing that is cool about Homestead, there's not one single person doing all the same thing. You got the 41, he's working the fence all night long. You have a couple of us, a lot of us adapted that run through the middle and slide up to the fence kind of line. I guess I kind of call that the slider line. A lot of people begin to adapt to that.

All of these different lines, they all take a specific kind of car balance to be able to do. So you're just constantly testing.

One thing that's kind of tough, in my opinion, is the guys were giving you feedback all race about what other cars were doing, where they're running. It's just because of their car balance. It's great to know all those things and great to hear it, but you have to just find where your car is working the best. Some guys can run the top really well; some guys can run the line I ran tonight really well.

If you can get that line I had going tonight, it's the safest line that can still keep up with the top. There's always so much risk going up and running against the fence. I was one of 'em, but a bunch of us tonight hit the wall. I think that's just part of this track.

It's a work in progress. It's a work of art to be able to go up there and really consistently do that on a lap-after-lap basis. I found it a few times tonight, but also was not in the right spot a few times tonight. So it bit me a few. I'm glad we didn't cut any tires or have any issues with it.

Q. 14 points ahead of Taylor, 4 points behind the 19.

BRANDON JONES: (Laughter).

Q. With how the Chase kind of went for you guys, what is the biggest thing you have to work on for '27?

BRANDON JONES: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there's one specific area you can put all your change into this basket and it's going to get better.

We have speed and things that we're capable of doing like we did tonight. On a consistent basis, I think everything needs to get a little bit better. It's so hard to nitpick the car and everything because you could watch my race back and, gosh, I can find a million mistakes I make, too.

I think that is where we need to get to. We don't need to be nitpicking the cars. We need to be, hey, I need to clean these things up.

There are things in the back of our mind. Engine is one of them we feel we're a little off on. I don't know if we're a little off on car or not. It feels like the JR Motorsports stuff and RCR guys, they've had more car potential. Seems likes they can do more with their vehicles than we're able to do.

That's a tough, vague kind of answer. I think that's the tough part of it. We sit in our meetings on Mondays and Tuesdays. We try to figure out and watch what these cars are doing a little bit better. It's hard to pick apart what they're better than us at. It seems there's a few things they're working on that they've got going.

I'm confident. We've made a lot of good gains, even here recently at JGR, about hiring new people in new areas. I think already some changes are being made in a positive way to impact us for next year.

Q. Also with your win tonight, it marks the first time in your career that you have back-to-back multi-win seasons.

BRANDON JONES: Last year I had a rough spell on the win bracket. It's still not where I want to be. I would like to be in the five to seven bracket some of these guys are in.

It gives me a lot of confidence, a lot of hope that we can still do it. That's always a nice way to solidify things.

It's nice, too, to be able to run up front just a little bit tonight in some of these races. It's such a different vibe to get up into the top three and top five than it is from 10th on back. It's just a different way of racing. The competition is tougher, but almost a little bit more respectful in a way when you get a little bit closer to the field.

The guys that are doing that week after week after week, they're just in that rhythm of it. So when we kind of don't have the kind of consistency we're looking for, that makes it a little bit harder to know exactly how hard to push the car when you're up front like that.

These are good moments, for sure.

THE MODERATOR: Brandon, congratulations.

BRANDON JONES: Appreciate you guys. Have a good off-season.