COLUMN: Joe Hawk

     Patience long has been a touchstone in the life of up-and-coming stock car driver Roy "Buckshot" Jones, whether it was forcing himself to attend college classes when the intoxicating whirr of the racetrack beckoned, or now, six years later, adhering to his game plan once he's safely buckled in behind the wheel.
      Aesop might not have been exactly right -- especially with respect to auto racing -- when he wrote "Slow but steady wins the race." But Jones, a 26-year-old Georgian in his third season on NASCAR's Busch Grand National Series circuit, believes there's more than a little truth to the fable's moral.
      "If you can run in the top 10, the top five every race, eventually it's going to come around where you'll be able to win a race," Jones said as he prepared for Sunday's Las Vegas 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "That's the big deal to me: to always be consistent. And to be consistent, that often takes more patience than we, as racers, care to use.
      "I like to win a race or two every year, but my main deal is to race in the top five every race. That, I think, says a lot about your team."
      Jones has only one victory in 30 Busch series starts dating back to his first race in late 1995, capturing the Sears Auto Center 250 by .002 seconds over Mike McLaughlin last July in Milwaukee. But in the first four races this season, he has finished 12th, 13th twice and then fourth last week in the Stihl Power Tools 300 in Atlanta.
      His goal of being a consistent top-10 racer is nearing reality.
      To finish in the top 10 Sunday, Jones may need only to show patience in piloting his No. 00 Aquafresh Pontiac around the 1.5-mile tri-oval. He qualified fifth Friday afternoon, with a speed of 157.512 mph -- just 1.8 mph off polesitter Jeff Green.
      It's no wonder, Jones, who stands a wee 5-feet-6 and weighs only 135 pounds, has become a fan favorite on the Busch circuit. He combines Hollywood good looks with an infectious Southern drawl and a nickname -- bestowed on him following a quick recovery from a childhood mishap -- that conjures up toughness.
      He also is one of the series' few college graduates.
      In fact, had Jones not finished college -- he earned a business degree from the University of Georgia -- he would not have had the initial sponsorship to start the sport. That was the deal his father, Billy, struck with him when the young Jones got his first taste of racing as a sophomore in 1990.
      "I wanted to get out of college once I started racing, but he wouldn't allow it," Buckshot said of his father, who today heads Buckshot Racing, based in Spartanburg, S.C. "I'm glad now he made me stay in, because if anything ever happened with racing I would need some type of education to fall back on.
      "And the way racing is today, you need a (business) management education if you're going to be owning a team."
      It wasn't easy, Jones admitted, being patient back then -- keeping his nose in the books Monday through Thursday as the allure of small-circuit stock cars awaited on the weekends. But that patience since has paid off.
      If Jones continues to place high in the spring-to-autumn series, he envisions moving up to the more prestigious Winston Cup series next year.
      "This will probably be my last full year in Busch," he said. "We want to move up to Cup. ... We won't try to run a full Cup season next year, but we'd like to run 10 Cup races.
      "That's the approach my dad and I have taken. When we've become competitive in a series, we stop right there and move up to the next class. We don't care about winning (series points) championships or anything like that, because our main goal is Winston Cup."
      But then Jones pauses, pointing out that that is next season -- at the earliest. There are still many races to be run this year, including Sunday's first-ever Busch Grand National event west of the Mississippi.
      "I'm looking forward to a good race Sunday," he said. "To even think about next year, I have to do well this season. It all comes down to being patient."
      A virtue with which young Buckshot Jones is quite familiar.
     
      Joe Hawk's column is published Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. He can be reached by e-mail at Joe_Hawk@lvrj.com.