Information By: TOYOTA GAZOO RACING – BRISTOL, TN
BRANDON JONES, No. 1 University of Arkansas College of Engineering Toyota Tundra TRD Pro, TRICON Garage
Finishing Position: 31st
What happened there from your perspective?
“I was hauling butt until I wasn’t. These guys did a really good job bringing a really fast No. 1 TRICON Toyota truck to the race track. I had my Razorbacks on the hood – I wanted to give them a good finish, and I thought I was going to. We had a really fast race truck. We started 13th and drove to the top-five pretty easily there in the first stage. We caught lap traffic early – I figured, this place is notorious for that, catching lap traffic and being diligent passing them. It kind of looked like Frankie (Muniz) was undecided where he was going to go. You have to commit man. (Ty) Majeski just had to commit to a lane, and it looked like Frankie did really prepare for it and turned across his nose. It is unfortunate – it took out three really nice good trucks that were going to compete for the win. I hate that, but we got some laps at least. That was my goal. Really needed all of them. I wanted to see how this track was going to trend tonight – how it was going to migrate. People looked kind of unsure of what that compound was going to do at the start of the race, and I just drove in it and committed to it, and found a lot of grip, and a lot of speed. I think that was some of the reason we had some success there towards the beginning of the race, just committed to the grip really early there and found some lap time. I wanted to get these guys a good finish – they really worked hard on this race truck all week long. I keep telling David Gilliland (partner, TRICON Garage) that I’m going to get him a win in this truck. This was going to be a shot tonight, but sometimes this stuff happens and it doesn’t work out.”