McMurray looking for top-fives to secure Chase spot
With six remaining races left before the Chase for the Sprint Cup field is set, Jamie McMurray and the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Team have their fingers crossed he is going to make the cut. And after his victory last weekend at the Brickyard 400 his team is confident he can pull it off, though he is going to have to start stepping on the gas to get there.
"It's just going to be five top-fives," Kevin "Bono" Manion, McMurray's crew chief, said after the Brickyward 400. "We picked up another 30 points today. Thirty times five is 150. We're 151 out. It's going to take some good, strong runs. That's all I got to say."
McMurray earned his 30 points for winning the race, and though it is unlikely he will win every race from now until the end of the regular season, if he can get at least another 30 points this Sunday at Pocono Raceway he will have a decent chance of getting into his first Chase. McMurray is trying to keep a level head and doesn’t want to get caught up in the math.
"Well, I view the Chase differently, I think," he said. "Every time I pay attention to points, we run 30th. I don't even really care where we're at in points. I think you show up every week, do your job. If you make the Chase, that's wonderful.”
McMurray is currently sitting at 16th place in the standings and needs to make it into the top 12, a feat which involves leaping over some heavy competitors. Clint Bowyer, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Ryan Newman stand between McMurray and the top 12, and all have top fives, better finishing averages and led a significant number of laps at Pocono before.
It’s not impossible to get into the top five, but his last run on the Pocono Raceway saw him finish in 36th. He has started in 15 races on the track but has never gotten as top-five finish, averaging in 21.7th place overall. But to his credit McMurray has won the two most important races of the season, the Brickyard 400 and Daytona 500, two-mega wins that alone make up the best moments of his season.
"Getting to win the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 means more to me this year than making the Chase. This year or in 10 years, the guy that won that race one time everybody will talk about. The guy that finished third in the points, nobody cares. I would really like to be in the Chase, but I have no focus on that at all. I know Bono doesn't want to hear that, but I don't."
However, McMurray is the third NASCAR driver to win the sports two most prestigious races within the same year, and he isn’t giving up the Chase without at least trying,
“We've had really fast race cars this year,” he said of the Earnhardt-Childress Racing Engines his No.1 Chevrolet is equipped with. “[It] has given us some great Chevrolet horsepower and Juan [Montoya] had a good finish at Pocono last season," McMurray continued. "So, I'm really looking forward to seeing what we'll be able to accomplish this weekend."
Montoya, McMurray’s teammate, dominated for a lot of last Sunday’s race, but couldn’t keep up with the lead in the final laps. He fumbled after his final pit stop and lost valuable seconds when his crew opted to replace all four tires while other teams were only taking two. Manion only took two from McMurray when he made his final stop, after which he came into the lead and never let it go. Montoya left the pit lane in seventh place and finished the race in the same spot.
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