Jamie McMurray still not sweating as he and Mark Martin try to catch Clint Bowyer for Chase spot
Jamie McMurray is not too stressed out about making the Chase. // Sam Cranston, NASCAR Illustrated
HAMPTON, Ga. – Jamie McMurray swears he’s not nervous about whether he makes the Chase For The Sprint Cup.
The Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver has victories in the two biggest races of the season – the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 – but still sits 100 points behind Clint Bowyer with two races left before the Chase field is set.
Bowyer is 12th in the standings with McMurray in 13th and then Mark Martin in 14th at 101 points behind.
McMurray is used to being on the Chase bubble. He failed to make the Chase in 2004 and 2005 while being in contention.
“I remember being really stressed out about all of that but it’s a much different environment this year,” McMurray said Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. “I won’t tell you I’m not thinking about it because I really want to be in the Chase, but it’s not something I’m focused on. … For us to be able to win those two big races, we’ve had a great year.”
McMurray will start the Emory Healthcare 500 on Sunday from the 12th spot while Richard Childress Racing’s Bowyer will start 14th and Hendrick’s Martin will start 17th on the fast 1.54-mile oval.
“If you were within 25 or 30 points, then you have a realistic shot and then there might be some pressure there,” said McMurray, who also said he is close to re-signing, as expected, with EGR. “I haven’t really thought about it. This has been a tough track for me. It seems some of the setups that we run well on some of the other mile-and-a-half tracks, they haven’t worked here.
“We really struggled in practice. We got the car a little bit better for qualifying but it still felt horrible.”
Any driver hoping to knock Bowyer out of the Chase will need Bowyer to have problems.
“If you start hoping that something is going to work out or doesn’t work out or whatever – it’s just best to stay focused on what you’re doing,” Martin said. “If we had scored more points this year, we wouldn’t be in this situation and that’s the bottom line. You can’t wait for two races to go and say, ‘We have to do this.’ We had to do this back in February. We’ve got work to do, and we are working.”
For Bowyer, he said “with any luck at all, we can be in this thing” and the only ones who can beat his RCR team are, well, him and his RCR crewmen. If Bowyer finishes in the top seven in the next two races, he’s automatically in the Chase no matter what any other driver does.
“I have to get in that Chase because I know we can perform when we get in that Chase,” Bowyer said. “I’ve seen me do it before, I’ve seen my team do it before. … Those are good race tracks for us, and if we can be part of that group, I really feel like we can be somewhere in the top five.
“I don’t know where that will be. I don’t know if that is fifth or a championship, but I really feel like we can contend.”
Ryan Newman, who is 15th in the standings and 118 points out of 12th, will start second. Kasey Kahne (136 points back) will start 10th.
The drivers who don’t make the Chase have a common theme – inconsistency.
“We’ve been a little bit inconsistent,” McMurray said. “Some of that has been my fault and some of that has been circumstances. We have had really fast cars pretty much every week. There have been a few tracks we have struggled at.
“Our goal for next season will be to work on that and get better on those tracks.”
