{"id":390718,"date":"2026-01-06T01:28:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/390718\/"},"modified":"2026-01-06T01:28:51","modified_gmt":"2026-01-06T01:28:51","slug":"erik-jones-no-43-team-makes-competition-changes-ahead-of-2026-nascar-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/390718\/","title":{"rendered":"Erik Jones, No. 43 team makes competition changes ahead of 2026 NASCAR season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yardbarker.com\/nascar\/players\/erik_jones\/911582\" class=\"yard_link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Erik Jones<\/a> and the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team will be under new leadership for the 2026  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/pro\/category\/nascar\/news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series season. Legacy <a href=\"https:\/\/legacymotorclub.com\/news\/2026-strategic-changes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> Monday that Justin Alexander will assume the role as crew chief for this upcoming season.<\/p>\n<p>Brandon Beshore, who took over as Jones\u2019 crew chief near the end of the 2024 season, was named the team\u2019s director of race engineering. Jones finished 24th in the points standings and compiled four top 5s in his lone season with Beshore sitting atop the pit box.<\/p>\n<p>Alexander is a veteran of the series, having previously served as crew chief for Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing team. Five of Dillon\u2019s six career Cup victories came with Alexander, including the 2018 Daytona 500. Alexander also worked as a shock specialist for Jimmie Johnson and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team, becoming lead engineer in 2005. Johnson is a co-owner of Legacy. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re continuing to evolve and refine every part of our race program, and Justin is a tremendous addition to our crew chief lineup,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cHis experience, communication style, and leadership align perfectly with the direction we\u2019re headed. We appreciate Ben\u2019s hard work and look forward to his continued contributions as he transitions into his new role.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Erik Jones will have a new crew chief in 2026<\/p>\n<p>The 2026 season will be Jones\u2019 10th full-time season in Cup and fourth with Legacy. He finished as high as 15th in the points standings in 2018, then driving the No. 20 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. Jones has three wins and 95 top 10s in 316 career starts in Cup. His last win came in September 2022, the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway. <\/p>\n<p>Legacy is making these changes in hopes of providing a spark to Jones and the No. 43 team. Time will tell if the moves pay off. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cJustin is a proven race winner, and we believe there\u2019s the potential for a strong chemistry with Erik,\u201d said Cal Wells III, Legacy CEO.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ll also have Ben raising all ships with the performance engineering group. With all these changes, we\u2019re hoping to continue the growth we saw in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erik Jones and the No. 43 Legacy Motor Club team will be under new leadership for the 2026&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-390718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}