Jones ‘feeling good’ but return from back injury is week-to-week

Erik Jones called his back injury “mild” Saturday morning at Dover Motor Speedway, where he will miss the first NASCAR Cup Series race of his career.

Jones is sidelined from competition with a compression fracture in a lower vertebra. The Legacy Motor Club driver was injured last weekend during a frontal impact crash in Turn 3 at Talladega Superspeedway and it is week-by-week as to when he will return to the seat of the No. 43 Toyota Camry.

“To be honest, right now, I’m feeling pretty good,” Jones said. “Any driver wants to hop back in, and I’d love to say I could get back in and do it right now. Is that possible? I don’t know. I don’t know how I’d truly feel in the car, especially at a place like Dover. I get pretty sore at night and when I’m not moving around. My range of motion is just a bit limited right now, but the soreness has faded away; it was pretty bad early in the week and was just kind of resting.

“Yesterday and today, I’m starting to feel better and better. There are certain motions and things that cause a lot of pain. The thing that’s probably the worst is it’s allergy season and when I’ve got to sneeze, that hurts pretty bad. But other than that, sitting here right now, talking, I feel pretty good. As far as coming back, I think it’s week-to-week. My injury, fortunately, is on the mild side, so we’ll just have to see how it’s healing up (and) how I’m feeling. Again, I’m feeling better and better every day.”

Jones is not wearing a back brace. His progress is being monitored on how it’s healing and what is seen on X-ray as Jones works with a neurosurgeon in Charlotte.

Earlier this week, Jones spent time with NASCAR at the R&D Center looking over the car, which NASCAR took from Talladega for further evaluation. Jones said it was similar to what Ryan Blaney experienced in his front impact at Daytona International Speedway last summer.

“The Gs and the impact were similar to that and (I’ve) been talking through with NASCAR what has to get fixed to see an improvement there,” Jones said. “Obviously, Ryan was uninjured in his, and I had an injury in mine. So, we’re going through and figuring out what the difference is there, but it was similar to his wreck.”

In a testament to safety, Jones believes his injury could have been a lot worse.

“I think NASCAR has gotten some of a bad rap this week; the Next Gen car gets a bad rap,” he said. “I think the car did its job. Unfortunately, this injury that we’ve seen in the Truck Series and obviously that is the old-style car and this is the first time we’ve seen this injury in this car. But it’s an impact that has caused that injury before. Fortunately, it’s not worse.”

An iconic look for Legacy’s No. 43 this weekend, but Jones won’t be driving it… John Harrelson/Motorsport Images

Corey Heim, the…