- Name
- Brandon Jones
- Birth Date
- February 18, 1997
- Hometown
- Atlanta, Ga
Brandon Jones returns to the No. 9 Menards Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in 2024 with a goal: compete for the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship in his second season with the Mooresville, N.C.-based team owned by NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr.
The Georgia native has made the NXS Playoffs in six of the last eight seasons, and will seek to return to the final 12 after narrowly missing out on making the postseason field a season ago. He will team with new crew chief Phillip Bell in 2024, as Bell returns to JR Motorsports after spending last year in the NASCAR Cup Series. Bell was the lead engineer for the No. 9 team in 2022, when the team won eight races and finished second in the standings following the final race of the season at Phoenix Raceway.
Jones has been a stalwart in the NXS since 2016, amassing five victories and making the NXS Playoffs in six times. His NXS career, which started in 2015, has seen the Peach State native earn 39 top-five and 111 top-10 finishes to accompany the five victories in his 269 starts. He’s led 876 laps along the way.
In 2022, Jones was on the cusp of making his first Championship 4 in the late stages of the penultimate race at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway. Jones started the race from the pole and led 98 laps before he was eliminated in a Turn 1 crash during a late-race restart.
Jones ran a partial NXS schedule in 2015 as well as a mix of races in both the Craftsman Truck Series and ARCA Menards Series. Jones then signed on for a full season of NXS racing for the 2016 season. The then-19-year-old qualified for his first NXS Playoff behind the strength of 12 top-10 finishes before finishing 10th in the overall standings.
The next three seasons that followed for Jones saw the Atlanta native rack up eight top-fives and 36 top-10s, while qualifying for the playoffs in both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, with his best series points finish of ninth coming in 2018. Jones’ breakout season came in 2020, where he earned a career-high three wins, 10 top-fives and 19 top-10s, and a sixth-place effort in the championship standings.
Following the 2020 campaign, Jones had notched one win, 17 top fives, 32 top 10s and qualified for the NXS Playoffs in 2021 and 2022.
Jones began his racing career at the age of 13 in the Pro Truck divisions at local short tracks in Georgia and collected track championships at both Lanier Raceplex and Gresham Motorsports Park in his first full-time season in 2011 at the age of 14. Jones then went on to compete in Late Models in the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) and United Auto Racing Association (UARA) in 2012 where he won his first UARA-STARS race at Concord (N.C.) Speedway before making his debut in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East later that season at Greenville-Pickens Speedway, finishing 14th.
For the 2013 season, Jones competed in the full UARA and PASS series seasons as well as a partial schedule in the K&N East/West Series. Later that season, Jones went on to make his national series debut in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and finished 27th at Bristol Motor Speedway, 20th at Iowa Speedway and 19th at Martinsville Speedway.
The 2014 season saw Jones move to the K&N Pro Series East full-time and make select starts in the Truck Series and three ARCA Menards Series starts. At 17 years old, Jones became the first driver in ARCA history to have back-to-back wins in his first two ARCA series starts when he took the checkered at Winchester Speedway followed by a win at Lucas Oil Speedway and narrowly missed a three-peat at Madison (W.I.) the following week. Jones then scored his first K&N Pro Series win at Iowa in August of 2014 and secured a third-place finish at Dover Motor Speedway in the Truck Series. The Georgia native went on to finish fourth in the K&N Pro Series East championship standings.