TALLADEGA, Ala. – Often considered one of the finest restrictor plate racers in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Jamie McMurray lived up to that hype during Sunday’s GEICO 500 earning a season-best second place finish.
Throughout Sunday’s race, McMurray in his No. 1 McDonalds Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates hovered inside the top-10, but when the caution waved with three laps to go, McMurray found himself a chance to earn his eighth career Cup win at the site of his last triumph in October 2013.
As leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was out front, somehow, Jamie McMurray with help from Daytona 500 champion Kurt Busch rocketed through the middle lane between Kyle Busch and Jimmie Johnson to bolt from fifth to second and even avoid some contact from side-drafting with Busch at the exit of Turn 3 to edge Busch by four-one-thousandths of a second.
“I mean it’s really circumstantial as to what the guys do in front of you and what is happening behind you. I just got a run at the right time,” McMurray said. “I thought the No. 17 (Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.) was going to get a little bit further out, but when we were coming to the line it just seemed like his car wasn’t going at that point, so it was a good finish.
“It was a great race. I’m glad everybody is okay, that was a really scary wreck on the backstretch, but really good day for our McDonald’s Chevrolet. We had good pit stops and the guys did a great job.”
The finish was McMurray’s 59th career top-five and first since Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway last November. It was also the Joplin, Missouri’s native’s ninth top-10 finish in 30 races at the 2.66-mile superspeedway.
“This has been a really good track for me and I haven’t been able to finish here the last couple of years, so really happy with that,” added McMurray. “We had good pit stops. Matt (McCall, crew chief) did a great job calling the race. The guys are building really good cars.
“You know, it’s interesting because in years’ past I feel like this is always a track that you thought you could win at and gain great points. And we have run so well at so many tracks this year, this was a track that I just wanted to survive at so we could get to another track and race.”
And while McMurray made a brilliant move on the white flag lap, the 41-year-old says he felt it was difficult to pass in general most of the day.
“I thought it was super hard to pass today,” McMurray sounded. ”I don’t know how everybody else felt. But you would ‑‑ until the tires wore out and the cars started sliding around, it was just three wide, and there really wasn’t anywhere to go. I actually raced with Kyle in about 30th for quite a bit of the race because there was no holes. It seemed like as the tires wore out and it got down to two lanes that you could kind of make people three wide and make some passes.”
Still, while teammate Kyle Larson struggled on Sunday after connecting with the wall early in the race, the team’s performance in 2017 keeps the two-car operation on the map with Larson’s 12th place finish keeping him in the points lead by 54 over Martin Truex Jr and McMurray jumped two spots to fifth overall in the standings.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
