Norman “Bubby” Jones was elected to the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame a decade ago. For a gritty racer who spent the majority of his youth on the road, competing against the toughest opposition at every opportunity, there is no higher honor. 
Today, Bubby is still at the race tracks and still a part of winning teams, but he is finding that his sons, Davey and Tony, are frequently among his toughest competitors.
Recently, Jones has been both a crew chief and mentor to some of the Midwest’s best young sprint-car racers. This year, he is Levi Jones’s crew chief on Tony Stewart’s USAC racing team. While Bubby is working with Levi Jones, his son, Davey, is across the pit lane with Kasey Kahne’s racing team. And Tony, affectionately known as “The Cowboy,” has been the hottest driver in the USAC-CRA Sprint Car Series over the past year. 
Davey explained the family structure this way: “I’m from the first marriage. Tony and Gina are from the second marriage. Ashley, Emily and Jessica are from the third marriage.  Me and Tony are the only ones involved in racing. My youngest sister is as old as my oldest son.” 
While they frequently raced together in the early years, Davey and Tony worked their way to the top on their own, Davey as a mechanic and Tony behind the wheel. While this can strain family ties, Bubby’s boys remain tightly knit and supportive of each other.
“That’s kind of hard because we’re spread out all over the country,” Davey says. “Let’s put it this way, Tony and I talk every week. I go over to Dad’s at least three or four times a week. And I see my sisters. Basically, when me and Tony keep in touch, it’s to talk about racing, you know. One week, he’ll be good and he’ll call and tell me what he did.  The next week, I’ll call him and we’ll kind of compare notes here and there. I don’t like to tell him too much because then I have to go out on the West Coast and try to beat him.”
Before the days of the World of Outlaws Series, Bubby Jones was a traditional Outlaw. It was a time when you lived on the road, knew the best routes from track to track and tried to make a living at the wheel of a sprint car that was just as dangerous as it was fast.
Jones raced locally while working as a barber in his hometown of Danville, Ill., before pursuing a full-time racing career that included USAC sprints, midgets and champ cars, the World of Outlaws and one Indianapolis 500 (1977) start. He later settled in California and competed with the California Racing Ass’n for more than a decade.
Following two seasons working with Daron Clayton, Bubby joined Tony Stewart Racing as the crew chief for Levi Jones (no relation). Levi Jones has won four times this season and leads the standings.
While Bubby is seldom seen with a wrench in his hand, that doesn’t lessen his value to the team. 
“What he brings mentally and what he can teach these race-car drivers, you can’t buy that,” says Davey of his dad. “That stuff, believe me, I wish I could…he can sit there and watch a race car go around the race track and tell you what’s wrong with it. He’s done it for so long. In my mind, he’s one of the best that’s ever been. Anybody that he’s went to work for has been fast. I don’t think he’s got too much more to prove. He just can’t do the physical aspects anymore.”
Davey was a logical choice to build the Kasey Kahne Racing Mopar team from the ground up over the winter. The team is running two cars in the USAC midget and sprint-car series with rookie drivers Kevin Swindell and Brady Bacon.
“Basically, this is the only thing I’ve ever really known all my life,” Davey admits. “I started as a chief mechanic when I was 18. I worked with Dad when he was on the Outlaw deal and hung around everybody. I’ve been very fortunate. I got to work with some of the best mechanics around, like Donnie Ray Everett, Jim McQueen and John Singer. It’s about the only thing I’ve known because Dad was always on the road.”
Davey had a lot of success with Bud Kaeding during nearly three years as his crew chief before going to work for Panther Racing. He worked with Dane Carter on Panther’s Silver Crown program before moving to the Indy-car side of the garage. He was Tomas Scheckter’s left-front tire changer and then chief mechanic, and also had stints with both the Hemelgarn and Fernandez IRL teams before being hired by Kahne. 
Both Swindell and Bacon rank in the top 10 in sprint-car and midget points, and Swindell won the Night Before the 500 midget race at O’Reilly Raceway Park. It was the first victory for the team.
Davey calls Bacon one of the best dirt drivers he’s seen in a long time, but adds, “On the pavement, I think he just needs some laps. It won’t be very long before we see him in the winner’s circle. The biggest part is me getting the car right for him. That’s been our biggest struggle so far.
“Kevin is Kevin,” Jones continued. “That kid just drives the crap out of the cars. On pavement, he’s really, really, really good. On the dirt side of it, he struggles a little bit because he’s kind of caught between the winged cars and the non-winged cars and he drives it a little bit too straight. But then one night he can come out there and blow you away. I just can’t emphasize the talent that both of them have.”
With a résumé that includes 16 SCRA victories and nearly a dozen in USAC-CRA racing, Tony is on top of the West Coast-based sprint-car division. Competitors have been chasing the tail of Mark Alexander’s La Villa Catering/Ferreira Dairy sprinter since mid-February, and Tony has extended his point lead with three victories at Perris Auto Speedway and a third on the Dirt Track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
“Tony is one of the hardest gassers there is,” Davey said. “That kid drives hard. He tries to live up to his daddy’s name. He’s a hard race-car driver. The biggest thing about Tony is he’s kind of gotten used to those Western tracks and when we get to the dry slick, he kind of struggles a little bit. But if that thing has got a cushion, you better look out because Tony is going to be up there wide open. That’s for sure.”
While his brother calls Tony one of the sport’s foremost gassers, The Cowboy has maintained his advantage in the points with amazing consistency. In the first 20 races of this season, Jones has finished in the top five 15 times.
Yet, while the brothers frequently share their successes, how much do they help each other? Davey responds. “That’s kind of the fun part about the whole deal. From the racer’s standpoint, you never want to tell anybody anything. You might feed them a little bit of information here and there, but when it comes down to it, you want your race car to be the fastest car there. We’re pretty competitive. I’ll put it this way, when Tony comes up against cars that I’m working on, he steps it up a little bit.”
Even though the summer is still young, Davey knows it will be one to remember.
“This year has probably been one of the most fun years I’ve ever had in racing. I get to be around Dad. The Kahne family has been really good to me; they give us anything we want. My two race-car drivers — I just couldn’t be more tickled to death with those two. Pretty soon we’re gong to be out on the West Coast and we’ll get to spend some time with Tony. Life’s good right now.”