Oh, I would for sure expect to see him in victory lane next year. If they are performing this well in a lame duck second half of a season with Chevy then I definitely think they will perform well with support from Toyota last year. Even this year, it wouldn't shock me if Jones ends up in victory lane, particularly at Talladega. He does tend to perform well at the super speedways
*runs like shit the entire regular season* *crickets* *One car barely eeks out two top twenty finishes and the other gets two top tens in a row* THE TEAM IS BACK AND ITS A RESURGENCE YALL (I can respect two good races but I know it takes a whole helluva lot more than two good finishes to make a team as a whole go the "resurgence" route)
Well, when you look at the stats, it's more than just two good races, that's what I'm pointing out in this video. It's 12 consecutive weeks of good performance, that's a third of a season. He's had an average finish of 14th in that time period which is a playoff caliber run for a third of the season and counting. If you remove his road course races in that 12 race stretch then his average finish is 10th, which is certainly playoff caliber. And if you take his stats in those 12 races and do the math on where he would be if he had performed like this over the entirety of the 28 races that have been run this year, he'd have about 12 top 10's, which is more than some playoff drivers. Actually, even with that terrible first half, he still has as many top 10's as a few playoff drivers, which really shows that the bar for making the playoffs is lower than it should be. I point of the performance of the 42 car not to say that the car is good right now (it's not), but the statistical improvements of that car show that the teams improvement is not just limited to Jones and therefore it is the whole team that is improving. None of this is to say that this is a championship caliber team today, but rather to say that they are on the right trajectory going into 2024 and could be a contender for a playoff run next year and a championship caliber team in the future. That's why I call it a quiet resurgence, it's not in your face, it's just quiet, consistent improvement.
It's been a bit of a rough year but their recent boost in performance has me hopeful to see Jones in victory lane again in 2024!
Oh, I would for sure expect to see him in victory lane next year. If they are performing this well in a lame duck second half of a season with Chevy then I definitely think they will perform well with support from Toyota last year. Even this year, it wouldn't shock me if Jones ends up in victory lane, particularly at Talladega. He does tend to perform well at the super speedways
*runs like shit the entire regular season* *crickets*
*One car barely eeks out two top twenty finishes and the other gets two top tens in a row* THE TEAM IS BACK AND ITS A RESURGENCE YALL
(I can respect two good races but I know it takes a whole helluva lot more than two good finishes to make a team as a whole go the "resurgence" route)
Well, when you look at the stats, it's more than just two good races, that's what I'm pointing out in this video. It's 12 consecutive weeks of good performance, that's a third of a season. He's had an average finish of 14th in that time period which is a playoff caliber run for a third of the season and counting. If you remove his road course races in that 12 race stretch then his average finish is 10th, which is certainly playoff caliber. And if you take his stats in those 12 races and do the math on where he would be if he had performed like this over the entirety of the 28 races that have been run this year, he'd have about 12 top 10's, which is more than some playoff drivers. Actually, even with that terrible first half, he still has as many top 10's as a few playoff drivers, which really shows that the bar for making the playoffs is lower than it should be.
I point of the performance of the 42 car not to say that the car is good right now (it's not), but the statistical improvements of that car show that the teams improvement is not just limited to Jones and therefore it is the whole team that is improving.
None of this is to say that this is a championship caliber team today, but rather to say that they are on the right trajectory going into 2024 and could be a contender for a playoff run next year and a championship caliber team in the future. That's why I call it a quiet resurgence, it's not in your face, it's just quiet, consistent improvement.