Jimmie Johnson’s Legacy Motor Club has not had a great Cup Series season so far. Top 10 finishes from its drivers, Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek, have been sporadic at best. Jones recently finished the race in Talladega in fifth place, but that appears to have done little to appease him. He spoke about the status of his team ahead of the race in Charlotte.
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Jones highlighted the ongoing adjustments in Legacy and stated, “In general, we don’t have any speed. We don’t have it right now, so that is tough. […] It is a process that has to get better. It is people we are moving around currently. It is people that we are hiring currently, and all that takes time, and with the people that we’ve brought in.”
Ever since Johnson took over as a co-owner of the team, he has been hard at work trying to reach victory lane. He upgraded the race shop, changed manufacturers, and brought in new people to various positions. But as Jones noted, success in the Cup Series doesn’t come overnight.
He continued to admit that while elevating performances from running 30th to 20th is feasible, making the leap from 20th to the top five involves a bit of magic that’s hard to conjure. He reiterated that patience is the key. The driver missed two races this season due to a compression fracture in a lower vertebrae. He’d suffered the setback following a crash in Talladega earlier this year.
Jones raises doubts regarding the future of his new crew chief
The 28-year-old did not refrain from pointing the finger at the team’s evolving dynamics and sluggish car speed for his underwhelming performance this year. As he did so, he also spoke about Ben Beshore, his new crew chief. He cast some doubt on Beshore’s role in the long term and said, “I would say that it is a trial period currently.”
“It looks like that’s going to be the rest of the season – here with five races left. As far as next year goes, I don’t know how that alignment looks. We haven’t got that far down the road, so I’m getting to know Ben (Beshore) and getting to know him through these next few.”
Jones’s previous crew chief, Dave Elenz, called it quits after the team changed manufacturers from Chevrolet to Toyota. Hopes are that the driver will be able to strike a chord with Beshore and produce some good results that will bring Johnson’s hard work to fruition.
