"We are on a great stretch with the 43, and we are making a lot of points and running well," Erik Jones told reporters June 6, 2026, before the NASCAR Cup Series race at Michigan International Speedway, summing up a run that has him and the team talking about doing more, not less.
Jones drove the point home with a concrete marker: "We are running right at the backside of the top-10 which is a step up for us, which is good." For a driver of the No. 43 Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE, that kind of consistency changes planning from patchwork fixes on race day to strategic investments across an organization.
One of those investments is an expansion LEGACY MOTOR CLUB expects to make next season — moving to three full-time teams. "I think going to three cars, at the end of the day, it is a value," Jones said, calling the extra entry "another data point" the group can use to develop setups and share learnings across cars.
His optimism met a practical obstacle in the same breath. "It is another data point, but the caveat to that, the challenge of it – we need to hire 60 people, approximately, if not more," Jones said. He added plainly, "Finding 60 people in today’s climate of NASCAR is not easy." That head count is the clearest measure of what the club must do to turn ambition into a functioning third car.
Jones traced some of the on-track gains to heavier simulation work this spring. "Quite a bit since we’ve got the finalized track over the last month, we’ve done a large amount of sim," he said, referencing development on the finalized San Diego layout. Jones described San Diego as similar to Chicago but "bigger, rougher, and with more turns," and said getting the line required long hours in the simulator to memorize the track and bring pace to the racetrack.
Off the Cup calendar, Jones also described the small-scale work that feeds the main program: his late-model effort near Berlin, where he and "one other guy named Mike" comb through setups and test packages. "It is fun. I always look forward to this week and get some bonus time up here next week, spending a couple of days over there at Berlin," he said, noting a Berlin-area late-model test about a month ago that went well. He even joked about an unlikely outcome, saying, "I hope not (laughter). If I end up in the Bay, I may just have to call it quits. I don’t think I would race again after that."
The practical friction in Jones's comments is not about engineering or sim laps; it is about people and assimilation. Beyond the hires, the club will have to integrate a new team, a new driver and a new crew chief into an operation that is finally showing upward momentum. Jones warned that assimilation — building a functioning group from new hires and the right leadership — will be its own challenge as much as the recruitment.
LEGACY MOTOR CLUB has momentum in the No. 43, and Jones is doing what drivers do when their car is competitive: squeeze more gains out of preparation, simulation and testwork. The next act, however, is organizational rather than on-track — assembling roughly 60 new staffers and folding a third full-time car into the existing program without blunting the No. 43's rise.
What remains unresolved is the part of expansion that will determine whether it helps or hobbles the team: which driver and which crew chief will fill the new full-time LEGACY MOTOR CLUB car. That decision — paired with the recruiting and integration plan — will decide if the club's current stretch becomes the foundation of a deeper program or a strain on gains already in hand.
