Jones, Nemechek Collect Double Top-10 for LEGACY MOTOR CLUB at Texas
It’s been a long and difficult road, but Sunday’s Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway was a definite step in the right direction for LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, with both of the organization’s full-time drivers, Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek, finishing inside the top-10.
The strong performance at one of NASCAR’s most treacherous racetracks is celebration-worthy, no doubt, as it’s the first time that the organization has managed to place multiple entries inside the top-10 in a NASCAR Cup Series event on a non-superspeedway.
Erik Jones, driving the No. 43 AdventHealth Toyota Camry XSE, was the best of the bunch for LEGACY MOTOR CLUB on Sunday, finishing in fifth place. It’s the Byron, Michigan-native’s first top five result of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign, and the organization’s first top-five on a non-superspeedway since the Fall of 2023 at Kansas Speedway.
After starting from 14th, Jones was able to methodically work his way forward and collect a single stage point at the end of the race’s first stage. However, it didn’t take long for that track position to slip away from the LEGACY MOTOR CLUB team, as the No. 43 received a speeding penalty during the stage break.
Jones continued grinding in the second stage, working himself up to a position inside the top 20 before disaster struck for the second time on pit road, receiving an equipment interference penalty, which for the second time before the halfway point of the race, dropkicked the No. 43 to the tail-end of the pack.
Luckily for the 28-year-old driver, that was the last significant setback of the afternoon, allowing Jones to continue slowly moving his way up the leaderboard, through various strategy calls and a fast racecar. A sequence of multiple restarts at the end of the race, would allow Jones to get closer to the front of the pack, before the final restart, in NASCAR Overtime, allowed him to snipe a spot inside the top-five.
“It was a sloppy day in a lot of ways. We had two pit road penalties, but just happy to come back from it and get a top-five. It would have been pretty disappointing to have a car this good, kind of our first car this year that’s been pretty strong, to throw it away. I thought we were headed that way, but it turned out well.”
John Hunter Nemechek also had a stellar performance on Sunday, bringing his No. 42 Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE home in eighth, for his third top-10 result of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series campaign.
Two top-10s in Texas! pic.twitter.com/20k9nOLUJz
— LEGACY MOTOR CLUB (@LEGACYMotorClub) May 4, 2025
Much like his teammate, Nemechek also had some struggles on pit road. The Mooresville, North Carolina-native was busted for speeding under the race’s first caution, which dropkicked him down to dead-last in the running order.
After making some progress through the pack, into the top-25, Nemechek and crew chief Travis Mack executed a two-tire strategy which catapulted the No. 42 into the top-10, running as high as seventh place.
A slight hiccup in fueling the Dollar Tree-sponsored entry cost Nemechek a couple of spots at the beginning of the race’s final stage, but as wrecks continued to break out, the third-year NASCAR Cup Series driver methodically kept moving forward.
“It means a lot,” said Nemechek. “We unloaded with speed this week, which was nice, in practice. Had good long run speed – guys brought a fast Dollar Tree Toyota Camry XSE. It was an up-and-down day for us. Just kind of all over the place with what we had. Glad to come home eighth. The last couple of restarts were tough with the positions that we were in.”
“I’ve got to get better from a driver’s standpoint racing up towards the front, but I haven’t had any chances at that, so progressing and learning,” Nemechek added.
For Jones, Nemechek, and the entire LEGACY MOTOR CLUB group, Sunday provides a glimmer of hope for the organization, which has been working hard to become perennial top 10 contenders in the NASCAR Cup Series since their switch to Toyota GAZOO Racing at the start of 2024.
Jones hopes that this weekend’s strong showing will kick the organization into high gear heading into the Summer: “Thankful for AdventHealth, LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, and Toyota to get a good run and hopefully we can get rolling. I would love this to be the start of our summer stretch and just keep it going.”
Next up is another good racetrack for Jones and LEGACY MOTOR CLUB, Kansas Speedway, where in 2023, Jones secured the team’s first-ever top-five result.
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Joseph Srigley covers NASCAR for TobyChristie.com, Racing America, and OnSI, and is the owner of the #SrigleyStats brand. With a higher education in the subjects of business, mathematics, and data analytics, Joseph is able to fully understand the inner workings of the sport through multiple points of perspective.