10:19 PM PDT on Wednesday, April 4, 2007 - By MATT CALKINS - The Press-Enterprise

NORCO - Sprint car driver Tony Jones was spouting off the Cliffs Notes version of his racing career in the kitchen of his Norco home when his 2-year-old son, Grady, trundled across the floor and jammed his miniature shopping cart smack-dab into the wall.

Tony laughed. Something he finds himself doing a lot more these days. "Everyone always asks me about him, 'Is he going to race one day?' " Jones said. "I tell them, 'No. He's gonna be a ballerina. I don't want him going through the same stuff I went through.' "

Jones' climb up the sprint car mountain over the past decade and a half has been full of spills and replete with falls. It even included an avalanche that kept him snowed in for about three years.

But no USAC/CRA regional driver was more dominant in the second half of 2006 than the 37-year-old Indianapolis native, and nobody is within 60 points of him this season as he gets set to race Saturday in Tucson, Ariz.

So Jones is in a good place, figuratively and literally, eyeing a title while opponents eye his rear bumper. It's the sort of year one might expect from the son of sprint car Hall of Famer Bubby Jones, one of the best drivers to ever come through the sport.

But look back just 18 months, and it's a different tale.

After having bounced around from team to team, Jones, who frequently races at Perris Auto Speedway, was running second-tier equipment and showing up to tracks Saturday with virtually no hope of winning. He'd try to compensate for a substandard ride with aggressive driving, but he would usually end up wrecking. In the rare case that he was in contention for a win, an axle would break on the final lap, and he'd again come up short.  It went on like this for three years.

Drive in ovals long enough and repetition becomes a way of life, but this was one recurrence that Jones couldn't handle much longer. "I was getting to the point where I would be at Manzanita thinking, 'This is my favorite racetrack, this is a huge race, and I'm not having fun,' " said Jones, whose garage is filled with trophies and plastered with pictures of him and his dad.

"People would come up to me after laps and say, 'Tony, maybe you should try doing this or try doing that,' and I wanted to toss them my helmet and say, 'Here, you try driving this.' "

Jones would never actually say these things because he might be the friendliest driver in sprint car racing. And his misfortunes wouldn't weigh him down too much because he'd come home to a wife and two kids who he said have always been No. 1 in his world.

"I've succeeded in life," said Jones, who once was fired from a race team after dedicating a win to his son, and not the car owner or sponsor. "I wanted to go succeed out there on the track."

So he put a call into Mark Alexander, who owned the Alexander Bros. No. 4 car. And he hooked up with Mark's brother, Steve, who now works as Jones' crew chief.

And after working out some kinks early on, Jones won eight races last year to finish third overall.

Now he feels as if he could beat anyone, even saying he'd like to see NASCAR Nextel Cup Series drivers J. J. Yeley and Tony Stewart come back to sprint cars so he could take them on.

The best part? Jones' competitors are loving it.

"It would tickle me to do death if Tony were to win the championship," fellow sprint car driver Rickie Gaunt said. "With Tony, what you see is what you get. I've never met a fan that didn't love him, and the thing is it's not a show, that's really who Tony is. He's the ultimate family guy. Whenever he gets T-shirts, he goes over and gives them to my boys. I'd be so proud of him if he won. Then I'd get drunk as a monkey."

Mark Alexander said the quality that separates Jones from other drivers is that he comes to race hard every day and is going to make the car go as fast as it possibly can.

But as Jones gets set to drive to Tucson, then turn around to lay out Easter eggs for his kids, you get the feeling he wants this part of his life to go as slowly as possible.

"I'm happy right now," said Jones, who has received a lot of help from primary sponsors, La Villa Mexican Restaurant and Ferreira Dairy. "You know, everyone I talk to, the Yeleys, the Stewarts, all of them say that if they could do anything in racing -- assuming they all made the same amount of money -- it'd be sprint car driving. I love the camaraderie. I'm having fun."

Reach Matt Calkins at 951-368-9649 or mcalkins@PE.com