By: Ashley McCubbin

It was announced on Thursday, May 2 that Erik Jones had received doctor’s clearance to get back behind the wheel of his No. 43 Toyota Camry XSE. However, Legacy Auto Club has taken the cautionary approach, in leaving Corey Heim in for Kansas Speedway.

Jones was sidelined with a compression fracture in a lower vertebra for the NASCAR Cup Series’ most recent event at Dover International Speedway, but attended alongside his team for the weekend.

“To be honest right now, I’m feeling pretty good,” he revealed at Dover. “As a driver, probably any driver, they want to just hop back in. I would love to say that I could get back in and do it right now. Is that possible? I don’t know. I don’t know how I would truly feel in the car, especially a place like Dover. I get pretty sore at night, and when I’m not moving around. My range of motion is a bit limited right now, but the soreness has faded away. It was pretty bad earlier in the week, and I was just resting. By yesterday and today, I’m feeling better and better.

There are certain motions that cause a lot of pain. The thing that is probably the worst – it is allergy season, and when I have 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 is week-to-week. My injury is fortunately, on the mild side, so we will just have to see how it is healing up, how I’m feeling – again, I’m feeling better and better every day. I have an appointment next week, and kind of will make a decision from there.”

The injury for Jones occurred when he crashed out of the GEICO 500 at Talladega Superspeedway on Lap 157 after contact between John Hunter Nemechek and Bubba Wallace.

“I think, for me, it is pretty straight forward. It hurt when I crashed,” he commented. “I’ve never broken a bone in my life, so I didn’t even know what that would feel like. I got out of the car on my own, and I was feeling better.”

Jones went to the infield care center, where he said he spoke about the pain he was feeling, but was released on the advice that if anything changed, he should return back later on.

“By the time I got back to the motorhome, after the interviews, I was in more and more pain as time was passing,” he continued. “Got changed into my clothes, and knew I was going to have to go back. It really hurt, and I had some trouble getting around, so I went back right away, and said there is probably more wrong than what I was letting onto you guys. It is really starting to cause me some pain, so then we made the decision to transport. We took an x-ray there, saw some possible problems, wasn’t really sure with the equipment, so we went ahead and transferred to UAB after that.”