Not much has gone right for Jamie McMurray since winning at Daytona International Speedway last July. He’s had only five top-10 finishes in the 35 races since 2007’s Pepsi 400, but there’s something about being a defending champion of a race that can raise your spirits. McMurray edged Kyle Busch by inches at Daytona last year in the final restrictor-plate race for NASCAR’s old Cup car. The win was the second of McMurray's career and snapped a six-year winless streak.
McMurray’s No. 26 Roush Fenway Racing Ford will sport a special Irwin Industrial Tools paint scheme in this weekend’s Coke Zero 400 at Daytona, a scheme similar to the one used last year.
McMurray hasn’t been close to victory lane this year, with a best finish of eighth at Martinsville earlier this season. He was 18th at Infineon Raceway and 41st last weekend at New Hampshire after being in a crash with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
O.K., I perused all of the Kyle Busch postings since Sunday's race and where's the outrage? I mean, if Kyle had clipped Dale Earnhart Jr. like that there would have been a 100 posts calling him out. But here this week there has been only some mention of his crashes overall last weekend. He hit Jamie McMurray man. For some of us this may be unforgivable!
Busch's globetrotting weekend skidded to a last-place ending. The Sprint Cup series points leader finished 43rd Sunday at the Pocono 500, set back by a wreck 47 laps into the race. Busch didn’t appear to see McMurray behind him on his right when Busch veered right and into McMurray. Busch then hit the wall, forcing him into the garage for major repairs.
"It’s really a shame our day had to end like that, we had a much better car,” said McMurray in the garage following the race. “I don’t know what happen with the 18 car, his spotter must have told him he was clear, when obviously he wasn’t. He tried to move into space that did not exist on the track and in the end, we were both victims. We had a much better Ford Fusion than 20th. It was a tough day and one of those deals that was completely out of our hands."
McMurray continued, "I’m really proud of all the guys on this No. 26 IRWIN Tools team; they really pushed hard today and we were able to salvage a somewhat good finish. We’ll take this and move on to Michigan next weekend.”
Busch said the mirror broke on the backup car while his crew tried to adjust it before the race, leaving him blind out of his right rear quarter panel. It appeared that Busch’s spotter tried to warn his driver over the radio about McMurray before Busch veered right, though Busch said in the garage that he didn’t get the message.
“So I couldn’t clear myself,” Busch said. “The spotter didn’t see say anything so I apologize to McMurray for wrecking their day.”
To listen to the hype surrounding the beginning of this NASCAR season, the Hendrick Motorsports behemoth is poised to roll over everyone in its path. This amuses Jack Roush, who not so long ago was the other behemoth in the garages.
By JIM ALEXANDER The Press-Enterprise
Two years ago, when Matt Kenseth won the winter Cup Series race at Fontana, it finished a Roush sweep of the weekend after Mark Martin had won the truck race and Greg Biffle the Saturday Busch Series race. Roush had just come off two championships in the previous three years (Kenseth in 2003 and Kurt Busch in '04), and had placed all five of its drivers in the Chase for the Cup in '05. They were, some daffy columnist suggested at the time, the Yankees of NASCAR because of their financial resources and research and development assets.
The point is that Hendrick ascended to what appeared to be super-team status when Dale Earnhardt Jr. signed on, creating a colossal marketing/competitive triumvirate of Earnhardt, two-time defending champion Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon. Yet through the first two weeks of the 2008 season, Penske's Ryan Newman and Carl Edwards have won races, and Joe Gibbs Racing's Kyle Busch -- the guy Hendrick tossed overboard to make room for Earnhardt -- leads the points standings.
Edwards, Kenseth, Biffle, David Ragan and Jamie McMurray acquitted themselves fairly well at Fontana in Roush Fenway's Ford Fusions. Besides Edwards' triumph, which he celebrated with his traditional back flip, Kenseth finished fifth, Ragan 14th, Biffle 15th and McMurray 22nd.
Although he crossed the start finish line in the typical right-side up fashion, Jamie McMurray's victory in the 2007 Pepsi 400 was no less memorable than Clint Bowyer's Daytona 500 finish. McMurray wasn't even sure he was the victor, asking his crew after the checkered flag whether he had, in fact, won. He was greeted with a resounding, "you did!" and the celebration began. Of course a victory at Daytona is always cause for celebration, but McMurray's was even more so, as it ended a four-season, 166-race winless streak.
This past seasons 500 culminated in a win for Kevin Harvick and a dramatic finish for his RCR teammate Clint Bowyer. The No. 07 pilot tangled with Kyle Busch and found himself upside down, in the grass, and sliding down the front stretch, while he earned an 18th-place finish. Fortunately his race car righted itself by the time it stopped moving, and when asked about his spectacular ride, Bowyer replied "actually, it was pretty cool," claiming that the only real problem was the mud that filled his cockpit.
Bowles-Eye View · Thomas Bowles · Frontstrech - Monday July 23, 2007
As the 2007 season enters its final 16-week stretch, Sterling Marlin has recently found himself stretching for any help he can get – his career sidetracked by way of the unemployment line, courtesy beleaguered car owner Bobby Ginn. After releasing Marlin and fellow veteran Joe Nemechek this week due to team restructuring, Ginn made it clear that lack of sponsorship – both men were running without full-time support – proved the biggest motivation behind making changes to his team. Fans have been merciless in their criticisms ever since; for all I can tell, Ginn’s about as popular in NASCAR-land right now as Kyle Busch with Hendrick Motorsports.
In some ways, those fans have a beef. As I pointed out in Sports Illustrated two weeks ago, there’s no doubt Ginn hasn’t been the best of owners – right now, the way he’s running his team into the ground makes Britney Spears’ fall from grace look pleasant by comparison. But behind all the yelling and screaming from the old-time crowds and some of my fellow talking heads, Ginn does make one point about Marlin’s release that carries weight. To make an organization work at NASCAR’s top level, you need sponsorship to make it happen – and in order to snag sponsorship, you need to produce. Unfortunately for Marlin, now 50 and in the midst of what he claimed was his last full-time season, that hasn’t happened for quite sometime.
It’s not like the driver wasn’t given every opportunity to make things happen. After three crew chiefs plus an owner change, the No. 14 has been through several transformations – and none of them have worked. Twenty races in, Marlin’s lone distinction is the only driver to make every race and not come up with a Top 10 finish. When added to last season’s collection of disappointments, the best Marlin’s been able to come up with since sitting in this seat is a 9th at Richmond – over one year and 45 starts ago.
If those are the most recent numbers on your resume, it’s hard to get sponsors to invest in you, even if you once were a lucky break away from taking the 2002 Cup title. Ironically, should Marlin have held on that season he would be in high demand, the first in line for the Past Champion’s Provisional made famous this year for keeping both teams and careers afloat. But alas, a hard crash in Kansas kept Marlin sidelined for the final seven races that year– leaving him in the category of “better” and not the “best.”
Despite being repeatedly acused of "only" cutting and pasting, sometimes I think other authors are perfectly capable of summing things up very well. I think Thomas did that right here. Consequently, I see no need to add my 2 cents at this point. On the other hand, in the tradition of newsgroups, that later developed into blogs, I am happy to share this information with you and will gladly discuss it with you. Feel free to add your comments.
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