Sometimes the biggest triumphs in life follow a low point.
Heading into the 2010 NASCAR Cup Series season, it was a time of change and uncertainty for veteran driver Jamie McMurray.
McMurray, who had been released by Roush Fenway Racing at the end of the 2009 season in part because of NASCAR limiting car owners to four entries, was unsure what the next chapter in his career would be.
Jamie McMurray (1) holds off Dale Earnhardt Jr. en route to winning the 2010 Daytona 500. (NASCAR photo)
However, after making a call to former team owner Chip Ganassi, a deal was made to bring McMurray back to where his Cup Series career began during the early 2000s. He would pilot the No. 1 Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing.
But there was also bad news. Sponsorship issues were a concern as the series headed to Daytona Int’l Speedway to start the season.
“We felt like we were going to run the whole year, but when the contract was signed, there wasn’t enough sponsorship to run the whole season,” McMurray told SPEED SPORT. “That sounds crazy now, but if you think back to that time, there was a lot of that going on where there were some teams that weren’t running full time.
“There were a lot of unknowns. I was at Roush, and then went back over to Ganassi and still had some unknowns even going back over there. It was a lot of unknowns heading into that weekend.”
As McMurray and the No. 1 CGR team began to get track time during Speedweeks at the 2.5-mile Daytona Int’l Speedway, adversity followed.
A crash during Budweiser Shootout practice sent the team to a backup car prior to the exhibition event.
“I remember being, ‘What car are we going to race now, are we going to race this car?’” McMurray said. “With the new crew chief with Bono (Kevin Manion), and trying to read him, I remember I crashed that car and how mad he was. Not at me but just the circumstances.”
But McMurray made the most of the test drive, guiding the orange-and-black Bass Pro Shops Chevy to a third-place finish in the non-points event.
A sixth-place result followed in the Gatorade Duel 150 and McMurray earned the 13th starting spot for the 52nd running of the Daytona 500.
“We had a really fast car in the in the 150s,” McMurray said. “That was when it was the last race on that surface, and handling was so important at that race. I just remember we went in to it with more of a handling car than a car that you knew was going to have really good speed.
“Our car handled well and that made a huge difference in the 500.”
A big question mark heading into The Great American Race was the track’s 32-year-old asphalt racing surface that was scheduled to be replaced later in the year.
“If you went back and you watched that race, that was an era that at that time if you wanted to be fast on a speedway, they would skew the cars, where like the left side was down,” McMurray explained. “The car didn’t look yawed out, it was yawed the wrong direction. If you wanted it to handle well, you would yaw it out where it looked like it was spinning out on the straightaway. That wasn’t nearly as fast, but it put a lot of downforce in the car.
“I just remember that we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to go with this yaw and it’s not going to qualify well, it’s not going to be good at the start of a run, but it’s going to handle really good at the end.’”
After the green flag, McMurray raced among the top 15 for the majority of the afternoon.
The complexion of the race changed when a pothole formed between turns one and two just past the midway point in the race.
“Honestly, I don’t think you could feel it in the car. I feel like they were telling us on the radio, ‘Watch out, there was a hole,’ and I think it had torn up some cars maybe prior to that,” McMurray said. “If I remember right, you could kind of see it, but you couldn’t feel it. I just remember trying to avoid it. It was on the bottom of the track. I also remember when they took the break to fix it, I think we were running like eighth or 10th.”
Keyword: McMurray: A Career-Altering Daytona 500 Triumph