Chicagoland: PJ Jones preview

Concord, NC (July 8, 2004) PJ Jones returns to the wheel of the Arnold Motorsports Dodge in this weekend's Tropicana 400 NASCAR Nextel Cup event at the Chicagoland Speedway.

Jones will make his fourth start of the year in the bright yellow No. 50 Intrepid, but it will be the first start of his career at the Chicagoland Speedway.

"I've never raced at Chicagoland before," said Jones, who in three races with Arnold Motorsports has a team-best finish of 22nd at Pocono. "I've raced at the other Chicago track over in Cicero for CART but that's not even the same ballpark compared to this place. I'm really ready to get back into the seat and see what we can do.

"Obviously the last oval we raced we had a great car (at Michigan) so I just want to continue that run. Honestly, I wish we could bring that car back it was so good. This week we have a car that ran well at Texas, so we should be in good shape. I have my trust in Mike Hillman, he's the man and we've been working well together. He told me at Michigan the car would be good for the race and that he'd fix it after only a few laps of happy hour where we were struggling with a bad steering box. Boy was he right, that car was really good."

Crew chief Mike Hillman and Jones have been a good team since the pair began working together again at Pocono. But despite good runs, the last few weeks have been tough on the team with three consecutive hard luck finishes. Jones would like to just turn that tide to the positive and send everyone on the team to a happy weekend off on Lake Norman after the Chicago event.

"It's been a rough stretch here lately. We had the Michigan run end with a totaled car and that was a heartbreaker for everyone here considering where we would have finished. At Sonoma the car was quick and we were collected again. Then last weekend Mike Wallace cut a tire at Daytona," explained Jones.

"What this team needs is a good result where we load the car on the truck and smile when we get on the plane. My goal is to try and get that top-20 finish so everyone that works so hard on this team can go boating on the lake next weekend and feel good about themselves before we hit the long stretch to end the season."

For more information on Arnold Motorsports visit: www.arnold-motorsports.com.