Special from Jones Racing

BYRON, MI (October 3, 2011) – Erik Jones showed why he’s the currently atop the JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour points standings this weekend by overcoming an electrical issue that could have ended his day, and turned it into the fourth-place finish he needed to stay in the 2011 title hunt.

Jones qualified on the pole for the McGunegill Engine Performance 100 presented by JEGS.com in his Paragon Corvette Reproductions Chevrolet and after the pre-race inversion, started from the third position.

"It was a good night for us really," said Jones. "We started third and were planning to slowly start working our way to the front. We were just kind of riding for a while when the second-place car started backing up to us a little bit and when we went to make our move for second, I got back into the gas and the car started missing really, really bad."

Jones knew his only hope to get his #4 Chevy Impala to the front was to make it to the pits and diagnose the problem if he was going to have any chance at getting his machine running well enough to make up lost ground on the leaders.

"We just kept riding it out waiting for a caution," said Jones. "And finally a caution came out. When that happened we went to the pits and tried to fix it but we couldn’t find out what the problem was. So we went back out and restarted 26^th and came in two more times only to find out that it wasn’t an engine problem at all, it was actually just electrical. The ground wire on the tachometer had fallen off. So then we went back out and eventually worked our way back up to fourth by the time it was over."

With a solid top-five run in the rearview mirror, Jones will now look ahead to the JEGS/CRA All-Stars Tour season finale at the famous Winchester Speedway on October 14^th and 15^th where he will battle it out with Midwest Late Model veteran Eddie Hoffman for the title of the first JEGS All-Stars Tour Champion, an event that will conclude a year-long points battle that will likely come down to the last closing laps of the season.

"I’ve never been in a points battle this close before," said Jones. "So that’s pretty neat for me. But at Winchester we’re just going out there looking for a win. That’s just how we are and if we can focus on getting that done we should be good in the points."