Jones In No. 4 Car At Infineon
The last thing any driver wants to do is give up the seat in his race car to another driver. Recent weeks has seen Tony Stewart get out of his car and allow Ricky Rudd to fill in due to an injury, but not without remorse on Stewart’s part. The decision to step out is even harder when there is no injury, just ask Scott Wimmer.
Wimmer and team owner Larry McClure along with crew chief Chris Carrier had a tough call to make. All the other teams who compete against Wimmer for a spot in the race each week have hired a road course “specialist” to fill the seat of their car at Infineon Raceway. Looking at the top priorities for the team, qualifying for the race and competing well in the race, Wimmer and company made the call to put P. J. Jones in the car.
“I believe I could go there [Infineon] and probably get our car in the race, but if I had a problem somewhere on the course qualifying the car, I might not be able to recover and make it up somewhere else on the course as well as someone like P.J. who has done road course racing a lot more. It just made good business sense with our recent drop to 39th in owner’s points, to take advantage of this opportunity to hopefully get a really good finish for our team. I plan to talk with P.J. before the race and I believe he will he will do a good job for our team.”
PJ Jones is glad to have the opportunity to race again for Morgan-McClure, “I’m excited about being able to go back to Infineon Raceway with the Morgan-McClure bunch. I got to race there last year with them and also at Watkins Glen and I always enjoy driving for Larry [McClure] and Tim [Morgan]. I think we will have a lot better opportunity this year by getting started earlier and having two weeks to prepare for the race rather than two hours.”
The last thing any driver wants to do is give up the seat in his race car to another driver. Recent weeks has seen Tony Stewart get out of his car and allow Ricky Rudd to fill in due to an injury, but not without remorse on Stewart’s part. The decision to step out is even harder when there is no injury, just ask Scott Wimmer.
Wimmer and team owner Larry McClure along with crew chief Chris Carrier had a tough call to make. All the other teams who compete against Wimmer for a spot in the race each week have hired a road course “specialist” to fill the seat of their car at Infineon Raceway. Looking at the top priorities for the team, qualifying for the race and competing well in the race, Wimmer and company made the call to put P. J. Jones in the car.
“I believe I could go there [Infineon] and probably get our car in the race, but if I had a problem somewhere on the course qualifying the car, I might not be able to recover and make it up somewhere else on the course as well as someone like P.J. who has done road course racing a lot more. It just made good business sense with our recent drop to 39th in owner’s points, to take advantage of this opportunity to hopefully get a really good finish for our team. I plan to talk with P.J. before the race and I believe he will he will do a good job for our team.”
PJ Jones is glad to have the opportunity to race again for Morgan-McClure, “I’m excited about being able to go back to Infineon Raceway with the Morgan-McClure bunch. I got to race there last year with them and also at Watkins Glen and I always enjoy driving for Larry [McClure] and Tim [Morgan]. I think we will have a lot better opportunity this year by getting started earlier and having two weeks to prepare for the race rather than two hours.”