Brandon Jones to JR Motorsports has to be one of the biggest ‘Who saw it coming?’ moments in NASCAR in recent memory. In fact, Dale Earnhardt Jr. got a lot of flak over signing the Joe Gibbs Racing driver after the announcement.
Many fans had criticized Junior and insinuated a lot of ‘other factors’ besides Jones’ ability as a racecar driver behind his signing.
Sold out for the sponsor money hope your glad to be struggling to run top 10 every week. What’s a shame so many more deserving guys.
— michael (@MikeCav29) September 14, 2022
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
He's a great fit because of daddy's wallet!
— Darth Hendrick (@DarthHendrick) September 14, 2022
Highly disappointing…you know there's more talented/deserving drivers for that car
— Joel Buys (@joeldbuys) September 14, 2022
However, if the man himself is to be believed, he feels that at JRM, they can extract the 2-5% from Jones that perhaps he himself hasn’t been able to realize yet.
Junior argued that the reason that might work is because of how different his team would be for Jones from that of Coach Gibbs.
In fact, he even mentioned his own example from his early days at Hendrick Motorsports.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. feels the culture at JRM would be key in Brandon Jones’ development
“When I was racing in the Bud #8 car, there was a lot of me I hadn’t tapped into yet. There was more that I could do that I could be, that I could become,” Earnhardt Jr. said in a recent segment of his podcast.
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
“I was only half the race car driver that I developed into going to Hendrick and understanding how they do things and learning all kinds of new ways of approaching stuff.”
The NASCAR Hall of Famer emphasized on how much a driver can change when they shift into a different culture, not necessarily because one is better over the other, but simply because they’re different.
ADVERTISEMENT
Article continues below this ad
“The way Gibbs does things is going to be completely different than the way we do them and that’s gonna expose Brandon to some new thought processes and hopefully it’s going to show up on the racetrack,” Earnhardt Jr. added.
Also Read: Dale Earnhardt Jr Launches Staunch Defense of Brandon Jones After Heavy Criticism From NASCAR Fans