Team News
Jamie McMurray Shows Team Key for Struggling Racers
By: Bass Masters, Rowdy.com
June 2, 2010
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For four years, Jamie McMurray was a man without a country, or rather, he was a man in the wrong country. After three impressive years with Chip Ganassi Racing to start his career, McMurray made what seemed to be a no-brainer move: He joined NASCAR powerhouse Roush-Fenway Racing.
He seemed poised to take a major step forward. Instead, McMurray only succeeded in convincing a large part of the population that he could no longer drive.
Replace McMurray’s name with that of Dale Earnhardt Jr. , Ganassi Racing with DEI, and Roush-Fenway with Hendrick Motorsports, and you’ve got pretty much the same story: A driver moves to a better team, but instead of becoming a championship contender he becomes an afterthought.
Lacking Junior's star power, McMurray was unceremoniously dropped by Jack Roush following another disappointing season in 2009. His career, it seemed, was on the decline.
But a strange thing happened on the way to the scrap heap: McMurray landed a ride in the 1 car for Earnhardt Ganassi Racing. He promptly went out and won the Daytona 500 for his new owner — who. of course, is his old owner, Chip Ganassi. More important, McMurray is running like he used to.
McMurray hasn’t picked up a second victory in 2010, but he has finished second in three of the past five races. Apparently the switch to the spoiler has helped a lot; he’s 15th in the points, just 26 points (26 was his Roush-Fenway number) out of the top 12.
And he sounds very confident both inside the car and out, telling his crew during the late stages of the Coca-Cola 600 that they should inform the 2 car that he would be up to take the lead in just a second. Were it not for a late caution on Sunday, McMurray would be celebrating that second win.
Jamie McMurray is home again. Back to a place he feels comfortable. Describing his relationship with crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion, McMurray says, “We just seem to think alike. I feel like I do a really good job of listening to the crew chief and the engineers talk. When I feel like I need something with my car, I'll suggest that.
“Kevin, when we sit in our (debriefing sessions) after practice, he doesn't talk a lot. He's just like, 'I want you to talk and I want to listen, feel you out.' He sits back and he just listens to what I have to say. Usually he thinks about it for four or five hours, I'll call him later on and ask him what he's thinking.”
Right now, we can only guess about the differences between the Roush way of doing things and the EGR way. But McMurray has always been a driver who likes to understand his racecar and, like Rusty Wallace, to be involved in setting it up. Perhaps the EGR way gives him more room to do it, and that makes him more comfortable.
Flash back across the garage to Dale Jr. Doesn’t he seem as lost now, or even more so, than McMurray did in his four years in the Roush-Fenway wilderness? And isn’t McMurray's newfound success a reason for Junior to consider making a change sooner rather than later, if he doesn’t turn it around in Year 3 at Hendrick?
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