Jimmie Johnson’s Legacy Motor Club has been in red-hot form this season. This is unlike last year, where despite high expectations due to their shift from Chevrolet to Toyota, their performance was underwhelming, and they finished low. For their last few races of 2024, they underwent a crew change and started this year with the new crew and a newer intent. Ben Beshore took up the crew chief duties for Erik Jones in November last year, while Travis Mack left Kaulig Racing and joined John Hunter Nemechek. But was this reason enough to help them climb up the ranks?

The team has gained momentum since the May 4 race in Texas, where both their drivers, Jones and Nemechek, finished in the top 10. After finishing fourth in the North Wilkesboro Speedway, Jones again pulled an impressive result with a P5 finish in the Atlanta race. With a streak of consistent performances from Charlotte to Atlanta, Jones has made a huge leap and is now just 49 points away from the cutline. From being at the tail end to now competing for a playoffs spot, the #43 team has turned a corner for good. But, according to Jones, this change in fortunes is because of the teamwork.

Erik Jones and the #43 team are working in sync

In the last nine weeks, Jones has particularly been doing the best for the LMC as he has jumped up from the 30th to the 16th spot. As per Jones, it’s not just the new crew chiefs who are responsible for the team looking well right now, but the entire team itself. Speaking in an interview ahead of the Chicago race, the LMC driver stated, “We swapped entire teams. So, engineers, mechanics, everybody. Um, so that’s not easy because for a lot of reasons, right? People are used to working with who they’re used to working with. So, there’s some apprehension probably just in a team swap, and then you get settled in. Well, then you got to get to know everybody and figure out what kind of makes them tick and what’s good.”

With the level of structural change of this magnitude, it definitely takes a while for things to settle and the camaraderie within the team to build. This has started to show now between Jones and his new crew chief Ben Beshore, which in turn has reflected in Jones’ performance.

“With the crew chief side of things, just learning the language between us, you know, myself and Ben, when I’m asking for certain things, what I’m looking for when he’s asking for, what he kind of wants from me, you know, what he’s most curious about after practice. And so, it took up until probably April to feel like I, you know, Ben and I were really on the same page, and knowing what was going on, and the engineers as well,” the 29-year-old driver explained during the interview.

Another important part of their crew change is the hiring of Matt Kenseth as their competition advisor. Kenseth, with 39 Cup Series wins, has applied his decades of NASCAR experience into reshaping the team and mentoring it in the meeting rooms. Though their relationship didn’t have the best start in 2018 when Jones replaced him to drive the No. 20 Toyota Camry at Joe Gibbs Racing, it has certainly taken a positive turn over the past two years since their reconciliation in LMC.

“I see a lot of my younger self in Erik, for sure,” Kenseth added. “He’s not nearly as funny, but other than that, there are a lot of similarities. There are certainly a lot of differences, too, but there are a lot of similarities, which helps me with him because I see a lot of things where I feel like I’ve learned from in the past: good, bad or indifferent.” But the job is far from done for Jimmie Johnson’s team. They will hope to have at least one car from the team in the playoffs, and with just four spots up for grabs, it is going to be an uphill task.

How LMC’s path to the playoffs looks like

Though Johnson’s team has shown good promise so far, the path to the Cup Series victory is still a long one. Halfway through the season, Jones sits in the 16th position with 379 points. While things look decent for him, it’s his teammate John Hunter Nemechek that needs a strong comeback to further close in the gap between him and Jones, as he currently stands with 346 points on the 23rd position. Either way, the team desperately needs a win, or they will hope that lady luck favors them.

Jones’ last win came when he was driving a Petty GMS Chevrolet back in 2022 at the Southern 500. He knows how to win races; it is upon the #43 team to execute on their positive run and momentum. And the same can be said for Nemechek; all he needs is a win, and he will be able to seal his spot in the last 16. In 2023, he was picking up wins for fun in the Xfinity Series, so he does know how to finish the job when things are going his way.

“Obviously a win would be great, but I feel like there’s couple of tracks we really have to target hard. Places where we can win. So for us, its keep doing what we’re doing. If we keep running the way we’ve ran since Charlotte, we’ll probably point our way in, barring another obscure winner farther back in points. So, that’s the plan right now to keep running well and keep racking these points, and I hope it goes well again this weekend,” Jones added during the interview.

Points or a win, Erik Jones and his team will take anything at this point to stage a massive comeback this year. A playoff entry would be huge for a team that is trying to build its own program with Toyota from scratch.