In December 2012, Erik Jones was a 16-year-old from Byron, Michigan, with no NASCAR national series contract, no factory backing, and no obvious path forward. He arrived at the 45th Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida, driving his own family-operated No. 4 Super Late Model, which was relatively anonymous to most racing enthusiasts. But what he did that afternoon and who saw him closest in the action would rewrite the trajectory of his entire career. 

Jones was racing side-by-side with late Kyle Busch, a NASCAR veteran with multiple wins under his belt. Yet, he pulled away from Busch with merely eight laps to go in the race and brought home the trophy. He had several run-ins with Busch while leading the race, but none could stop him.

Today, while he sits with Kevin Harvick and co. on his podcast, Kevin Harvick Happy Hour, Jones can’t help but recall how that one victory fast-tracked his entire NASCAR career.

“I was 16 at the time, and I didn’t have any opportunity in a NASCAR car at all. I wasn’t really getting any interest from anyone on that side of things. So, all of a sudden, it opened up a door for me to go drive his truck for a minute,” he explains about the exposure he received. “I got to do five races that next season for him, and we won one of them at Phoenix, and then that went to 14, maybe the next year and in 2014, and then full-time in ’15 with him.”

Jones made his KBM debut at Martinsville in April 2013, becoming the first 16-year-old to start a Truck Series race since Busch himself did so in October 2001. In his fifth Truck Series start, at Phoenix in November 2013, he led 84 of 150 laps and won, marking his first NASCAR national series victory. That was the race that confirmed for Busch, and for Joe Gibbs Racing, that what they had seen at Pensacola was not a fluke.

But Busch’s reach extended far beyond the contract, as Jones admitted his future would have been a lot different if not for Kyle Busch.

“He was always the guy that got to kind of pick me from the crowd and help me along, and without him, I don’t think I ever would have really gotten to where I am. I think maybe there would have been some opportunities along the way, but probably not like he gave me with the trucks and the equipment that he had at the time that were top-notch, and I was able to go out and run up front and win.”

 KBM in 2013 and 2014 was among the most dominant Truck Series programs in the sport, and Jones himself had five top-10s in five starts in his debut 2013 season, then returned in 2014 to win three races in just 12 starts. And being placed in that machinery gave Jones the platform to prove himself in front of the Toyota hierarchy, not just in front of Busch.

In 2015, Jones joined KBM full-time and won the Truck Series championship, becoming the youngest Truck champion in series history at 19 years, 5 months, and 21 days. The next year, Jones moved up to the O’Reilly/Xfinity Series full-time with JGR, won four races, collected 15 top-fives and 20 top-10s, and finished fourth in the standings, while also claiming Rookie of the Year honors.

JGR, by then, had no doubts about Jones’ talents, but with no room in their four-car Cup lineup, they sent Jones to Furniture Row Racing, a fellow Toyota technical partner, for 2017. He returned to JGR’s own No. 20 in 2018.

So, when it came to paying Busch back, Jones did it in the most fitting way possible.

A path charted for success at the top…

On September 2, 2019, in his 100th Cup start, Jones won the Southern 500 at Darlington. Busch had controlled much of the final stage, but was jumped in the pits and spent the closing laps chasing Jones down, eventually finishing behind the driver he had once picked from a short-track field. Jones became the only driver in Cup Series history whose first two wins came at Daytona and Darlington, and one can only imagine how proud Busch must have been.

Their relationship as a driver and mentor went beyond the track and extended to bonding over shared interests. And for Jones, the best part of their off-track interactions was the time he spent with the Busch family.

“It was fun to watch him and Brexton just go race and watch that relationship grow and then see how much he cared about him and his racing and how much he put into it. There were just a lot of neat things that Kyle had going on, you know, even away from his own racing that was fun to watch.”

Racing with Legacy Motor Club in the Cup Series, Erik Jones is undoubtedly among those drivers who carry the flame of Rowdy’s legacy forward from behind their own steering wheels.