It’s been nearly seven years since Joe Gibbs Racing cut bait on a certain young driver, perceived to be struggling at the NASCAR Cup Series level, in favor of an established name. The replacement with all the accolades, 41-year-old Matt Kenseth, paid immediate dividends — seven victories and a championship bid in his first season with JGR, resulting in a runner-up finish in the standings. But that season was the only one of Kenseth’s tenure in which he finished inside the top four in points.
The young driver freed to make room for the aging former champ was Joey Logano, whose production output for his age ranked among the best in Cup Series history. JGR’s misevaluation was Team Penske’s gain. Logano has finished fourth or better in points three times in the last six seasons, including a championship in 2018.
Since Logano, JGR promoted two young drivers from its development pipeline — Daniel Suárez and Erik Jones. Furniture Row Racing’s closure last season made a free agent of 38-year-old Martin Truex Jr. and JGR was quick to jettison Suárez to make room. The results have been similar to Kenseth’s during his first season; Truex pocketed his third win through 13 races last weekend in Charlotte. The organization’s bet on Truex, at this very moment, is not being questioned.
Now, JGR again finds itself at a crossroads, forced to make room for Christopher Bell, a driver widely considered the No. 1 NASCAR Cup Series prospect.
Bell isn’t a JGR find, per se — he emerged from the dirt tracks of USAC through Toyota’s lavish driver development program, pocketing 11 wins across 52 NASCAR Xfinity Series starts and a NASCAR Truck Series championship in 2017. Toyota, already having helped develop Kyle Larson and William Byron only to see them break into the Cup Series with rival manufacturers, is sweating the next step in Bell’s career with good reason. (Suarez also came through the Toyota development program program, but was not groomed as extensively as Bell and Larson.)
A conservative estimate of Bell’s development is $23 million over the past four years, a hit absorbed by the manufacturer itself or its business partners. Even if that dollar amount is short of the actual number, it’d still make Bell the most expensive development driver in NASCAR history by a wide margin. Toyota’s urgency to get him to the Cup Series is very real and his move away to another manufacturer would be devastating.
Jones appears the most likely casualty, the pick with the most potential to get “Suárez’d” as my colleague Jeff Gluck aptly stated in a live Q&A earlier this week. There may be a glimmer of hope, though, as Jones and JGR have been discussing a contract extension that would lock him down for the foreseeable future.
“We’re working it out,” Jones said of his contract talks during a media availability last weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “I think we’re on the right path for keeping it going.”
But that was before a dead-last finish in Sunday’s 600-mile race, the result of a blown right-front tire, an impediment plaguing five different teams under JGR’s purview across Charlotte’s Cup and Xfinity races. He’s crashed five times through the first 13 races of 2019 — a total to which some are quick to point — but Charlotte represented his first accident-related DNF this season and his per-race crash frequency, 0.38, equals those of Truex and Denny Hamlin, two of his stablemates at JGR.
Still, it may serve as justification to keep the extension in limbo with Bell such an easy replacement. That would be a shame considering Jones’ production and output to this point in his career.
Before replacing Jones, three things should be considered:
1. Erik Jones and Daniel Suárez have much different statistical trajectories
Swapping out Suárez for Truex was a low-risk move for JGR considering Suárez’s age (26 going on 27) and future outlook based on his history. His career PROA — the average production rating compared to the expectation of drivers his age — sat at minus-0.015 before this year, grading out as barely below average. He’ll improve with age as drivers generally do, but he isn’t tracking like a generational talent across the aging curve.
Jones is. Through his first two seasons, his career PROA was a plus-1.035 — not only an above-average mark, but a better career-long production number than Hamlin (plus-0.927), Kenseth (plus-0.883) and Truex (plus-0.459), all drivers JGR believed in enough to heavily invest in within the last decade.
2. Erik Jones is younger and possibly better than Christopher Bell
Despite an obvious, costly fault, Bell is very good. In fact, he won six times and averaged a third-place finish in the 17 races on non-drafting ovals in which he didn’t crash last year. He was an above-par passer on every track type in 2018, a trait that’s carried over to this season. A regression analysis prior to this year indicated he’d be the 15th-most productive Cup Series driver in equal equipment had he been given a promotion.
The same regression analysis projected Jones as the ninth-most productive Cup driver this season, which is precisely where he ranks through 13 races and where he wrapped the 2018 season. Lest we forget, his Xfinity Series bona fides were strong considering his competition; he won six times in his first 59 Xfinity starts in an era when Cup driver participation wasn’t limited as it has been during Bell’s time. Like Bell will, he entered the top level of stock car racing as an above-par passer, ranking first in surplus passing value among full-time drivers.
To wit, Jones accomplished all of this at a younger age — he was born in May 1996 — than Bell, born in December 1994.
3. Erik Jones is already one of the 10 most productive drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series and the second-most productive driver under age 25
As a rookie, Jones ranked 12th among all drivers in production and has been a top-10 fixture ever since, but most important for the future is his standing among those in his age group. Chase Elliott is the only under-25 driver consistently ranking ahead of Jones in production and William Byron is the only one trailing within sniffing distance. Both Elliott and Byron are employed by Hendrick Motorsports, an organization in the midst of a rebuild in hopes of rivaling JGR in the coming years as its drivers grow and improve toward their most likely statistical peak at ages 35 through 40.
The ideal scenario would be for JGR to keep both Jones and Bell in its camp — with an eye toward the future — but the logistics of such a thing are messy. With Truex and Kyle Busch signed to fresh deals, Hamlin is the most realistic other option, and dumping him now would mean cutting ties with the most recent Daytona 500 winner ahead of his age-39 season, the year that, on average, is the most bountiful of a driver’s career.
Too much talent is the proverbial “good problem to have” for JGR, but nothing about this feels like opulence. A productive driver will soon be shortchanged. Regardless of who it is, there’s no guarantee of a landing spot as competitive as the one where he’s now stationed. The wasting of a generational talent looms as a possibility.
