The obvious pain has largely started to subside for Erik Jones but when he walks into the hauler each time this weekend at Dover Motor Speedway and sees his fire suit hanging up, that is a different kind of hurt.
“I’ve never missed a Cup race and this is my eighth season,” said Jones during a press conference on Saturday morning. “I’ve never had the chance to sit back and watch a Cup race in a long time now, and obviously never seen my team perform without me.
“You have to look the at the positives and at least I’ll be able to take a view of my team from a side that I’m not involved for a weekend at least and see how things look. It is definitely more challenging I thought, waking up this morning, to be honest and getting ready for today and realizing that you are not getting in the car. You see the suit, it’s hanging up, that’s tough.”
Jones suffered a compression fracture in a lower vertebra in a crash at Talladega last weekend and is week-to-week on his recovery plan. This weekend, Corey Heim will drive the No. 43 for Legacy Motor Club and its expected that the same plan will be in place for Kansas next weekend.
Team co-owner, and seven-time Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson could make some starts around his part-time schedule in the No. 84 as well, but it’s all TBD.
Jones is healthy enough to have traveled to Dover this weekend, where he will assist Heim in acclimating to the radically different Cup Series car, but that kind of makes it sting worse because there are times he thinks against better judgement that he could race.
“To be honest right now, I’m feeling pretty good,” he said. “As a driver, probably any driver, they want to just hop back in. I would love to say that I could get back in and do it right now. Is that possible? I don’t know.
“I don’t know how I would truly feel in the car, especially a place like Dover. I get pretty sore at night, and when I’m not moving around. My range of motion is a bit limited right now, but the soreness has faded away. It was pretty bad earlier in the week, and I was just resting. By yesterday and today, I’m feeling better and better.”
He concedes there are certain motions that ‘cause a lot of pain,’ and sneezing is the worst.
“Other than that, sitting here right now, talking, I feel pretty good,” Jones said. “As far as coming back, I think it is week-to-week. My injury is fortunately, on the mild side, so we will just have to see how it is healing up (and) how I’m feeling.
“I have an appointment next week and kind of will make a decision from there.”
There has been a lot of discourse, and some criticism over the process that saw Jones get released from the infield care center after the crash, only for the 27-year-old to come back an hour later and say he felt worse, ultimately being transferred to a nearby hospital.
Due to adrenaline and swelling, Jones said it was hard to immediately know how severe his injury was. He had nothing but praise for the infield care staff.
“Got to the care center, told them what was wrong –- that my back was hurting — and they poked and prodded all over me, like they normally do,” Jones said. “I said everything felt okay and I told them multiple times that it felt like muscle strain to me.
“From there, I got up and I was getting around. I walked into the care center. I got up to leave, and was feeling good, was getting released. I talked to a couple of nurses on the way out and they said if anything changes, just come right back because they were under the same impression – a lot of adrenaline – and they could tell that I was hurting a little bit.”
He went back to the motor home, changed clothes, and that’s when the pain really set in.
“I knew I was going to have to go back,” he said. “It really hurt, and I had some trouble getting around, so I went back right away, and said there is probably more wrong than what I was letting onto you guys.
“It was really starting to cause me some pain, so then we made the decision to transport. We took an x-ray there, saw some possible problems, wasn’t really sure with the equipment, so we went ahead and transferred to UAB after that.”
Johnson also took no exceptions to how that process was handled.
“I think Erik did the right thing going back to the infield care center,” he said. “Once he got to his bus, his environment changed a little bit, and he handled that very well. I think the care center reacted perfectly.
“It was not much he could have done differently in that moment. I think everybody did a great job.”
Jones has also met with NASCAR over the condition of the car and what might have led to his injury but it’s still early on the front.
“The wreck was really similar to Ryan Blaney’s at Daytona last summer,” Jones said. “The Gs and the impact were similar to that, and kind of talking it over with NASCAR on what has to get fixed to see an improvement there. Obviously, Ryan was uninjured in his, and I had an injury in mine, so trying to figure out what the difference is there, but it was real similar to his wreck.”
For now, Jones said he has received some text messages from his peers who have missed races, and the main takeaway was that this is a good chance for him to somewhat decompress from the racing grind and just evaluate life holistically.
He also gets to watch his team, participate with them from a different vantage point, which can be a valuable experience to him as well.
“I want to be in that car, but right now, I’m just trying to find the positives,” he said. “We can take at least a week and see what the group looks like from the outside, watching in. You can see that advice from people around you – it is going to be interesting to see for myself this weekend.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.