DARLINGTON, South Carolina – It wasn’t a stout performance by any means by Jamie McMurray and his Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates race team, but the team’s 14th place finish in Sunday night’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway was good enough to put the Joplin, Missouri-native within sight of his first spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Theoretically, McMurray will need just to take the green flag next Saturday night at Richmond (Va.) International Raceway to claim his stake, but any pressure that the Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates team was feeling entering the track “Too Tough To Tame” is now at ease.
“Yeah, honestly for the last 10 weeks we have been racing,” said McMurray. “Literally if you don’t have a car that can win you are just trying to get the most points you can. We had an okay car tonight. I was super conservative. My radio only worked about two percent of the time. So, I had a spotter sometimes, but I didn’t others.”
The 39-year-old McMurray hasn’t won a Cup race since the fall Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway two years ago and through 25 races this season, the driver of the No. 1 McDonalds / Cessna Chevrolet has only managed two top-fives and seven top-10s. Despite what some would consider lackluster results, a conventional approach has fared well for the 14-year Cup veteran.
The seven-time Cup winner admitted he played that same approach Sunday night.
“I was really conservative on restarts and really throughout the whole race. I’m hoping that we are locked in tonight so that we can go to Richmond and race and have fun. And just know that there are no consequences.”
Though not officially locked in, consistency has prevailed for the No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates team to put McMurray within grasp of his first opportunity to compete in the Chase for the Sprint Cup.
Though it goes without saying that it’s going to take a lot more than just steady and solid runs to advance McMurray to the championship round come Homestead-Miami (Fla.) Speedway November 22.
Before the season started, co-owner Felix Sabates guaranteed that his two teams driven by McMurray and sophomore driver Kyle Larson would win this season. And while that promise hasn’t exactly been fulfilled yet, the opportunity to thrust the team into the spotlight amidst a chase that would be filled with multiple winners is promising.
Chip Ganassi Racing won the Verizon IndyCar Series title last weekend with Scott Dixon, and while it would take components to work out perfectly to capture the same triumph in Sprint Cup,
the likable driver is easily a favorite, perhaps to some standards, an underdog entering the 10-race battle.
Sure, you’ll have Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Denny Hamlin and the Busch brothers all vying for the title, but there’s a persona from McMurray that makes him unpredictable, striking unannounced.
Of course, it’s hard with the Chase just two weeks remaining to not think of what Ryan Newman and Richard Childress Racing accomplished during their 10-race championship bid a year ago. Newman, in his first year driving for the Welcome, North Carolina-based team was one spot, just one position away from hoisting the trophy.
Right now, it’s a fair conjecture that you can put the No. 1 team along a similar path as Newman, but with a rules package that has proven to be difficult to pass, the Chase opens the door for potentially new and potentially unsuspecting sequences to occur.
And that could be the trigger for McMurray to fire. In lethal force.
No matter what the outcome, though, McMurray barring a complete disaster will take the green flag on Sept. 20 at Chicagoland Speedway finding himself with the biggest challenge, yet opportunity presented to him.
Something he’s dreamt about since joining NASCAR in 1999.
The opportunity and chance to be crowned a Sprint Cup Series champion.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.
