 | | Jamie McMurray: "The No. 2 will always be Rusty's number and the 6 will always be Mark's. No matter who drives those cars that's what you're always going to think." Credit: Autostock |
By Marty Smith, NASCAR.COM
October 26, 2005
03:34 PM EDT (19:34 GMT)
MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Jamie McMurray is lounging in his motor home, poring over a bulging three-ring binder stuffed with intricate shock data. He's a studier, McMurray. He wants to know the hows and whys, not just the whats. He's still uncertain what his work address will be in 2006, and for now he doesn't care. It's completely out of his hands, so concerning himself with it is futile, a waste of energy. One thing he is quite certain of, however, is that he won't be a lame-duck driver whether he's in a Ganassi Dodge or a Roush Racing Ford. His current team is fully behind him. His future team can't wait to have him. On Friday evening at Martinsville, McMurray pushed aside his notes or a bit to converse regarding his employment situation, the mental effects of barely missing the Chase for a second consecutive year and how it feels to be handpicked to replace a legend. Q: Well, let's start with the one question everybody wants to know. Where does Jamie McMurray stand with possibly being let of his contract with Chip Ganassi Racing? McMurray: It's kind of out of my hands, everything that's going on right now. I know there's a lot of negotiation with Roush, and I believe with Penske and with Ganassi, on how they're going to get this all worked out. But I've been kept in the loop, so I'd be lying if I said I didn't know anything. But it's out of my control. I think they're getting things worked out, but as far as I know I'll still be in the 42, and that's kind of where I am right now. But if I had my choice I'd rather go to where I know my future is. And it's kind of hard because I still get along so well with my crew chief and with my team. We're all really good friends, and if I am there for another year it's not a bad deal. I made a decision and if I have to sit there another year, I will. But hopefully they'll get this thing worked out. Q: That's one thing most folks are saying, that it'll be bad blood, wondering whether the 42 guys will really give 110 percent knowing that driver isn't going to be there the following year. McMurray: Yeah, no doubt. I think every driver situation would be different, and everyone has a different personality and has a different relationship with their teams. But I can get along with anybody, and I'm pretty much known for being an outgoing, pretty good guy. There were a couple of weeks after the announcement that were a little bit tough around our race team. But I think everyone knows I didn't leave where I am for personal issues. And I think that sometimes people assume you make a decision based off of an emotion, and not off of performance or the business side of it. As long as you don't let your personal side or your emotions be what you made your decision off of ... What I'm saying is my guys know that I did it because I wanted to go somewhere I thought I could run better and that I could win races. I felt like I gave it three years at Ganassi and we could get it done. And Roush has won the last two championships and really good, quality drivers to learn from. It's just a really good opportunity. Q: I was discussing your situation with (Roush Racing president) Geoff Smith last week at Lowe's Motor Speedway, and he said there are only two guys that can be in the seat of the 97 next year: Kurt Busch or Jamie McMurray. That's it, that's what the sponsors demand. I'll assume sponsorship dictated your moving to the 97 rather than the 6 as we all first thought?  |  | JAMIE McMURRAY | |
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McMurray: Everything has changed in the last three or four months, since we made the announcement I was going to go to Roush Racing. There's been a lot of things go down with the sponsors internally at Roush. And Mark had pretty much agreed to stay for another year before anyone knew that Kurt was leaving. So we pretty knew Mark was going to be in the 6 next year. So that was set, and I was going to be there in 2007. But with Kurt, obviously, leaving, or wanting to get out of his contract at the end of this year, that left the 97 vacant. So if I were to go there next year, that's where I'd end up. It's just a big thing of dominoes. A lot of the changes had to do not only with sponsorships, but the fact that Mark had already committed himself to staying there the following year and had committed to the new sponsor that he was going to be there. So it's hard to move all that stuff around. Q: Here you are, going into Richmond, right there on the cusp (of making the Chase) again. Talk about the emotions involved in the Chase, the Race for the Chase, the mental aspect of it all on you guys and whether or not it is a relief once you know definitively whether you're in or out. McMurray: In 2004 it was a lot different. I've never been through anything like that, and I viewed it different. I viewed it that everything from my whole year was going to ride on one night, and it all came down to that night in Richmond. It was huge disappointment not making it. This year we went into Richmond in the exact same position, but what I realized is we had 25 races to put ourselves in that position. We didn't do a very good job ... I looked at Mark Martin and Jeremy Mayfield, who the year before were in the same position we were in, but this year they earned enough points in the first 25 (races) that they didn't have to worry about it. They were locked in, pretty much. You can't put that much pressure on yourself to make it all come down to one evening. And the other deal, we ran really well at Richmond in both races, had really good cars, but as a race team, the year before, we ran so well that I felt we really deserved to be in the championship. We were running so well. We had four or five engines break on us. Not that that kept us out, but without those DNFs, we would have made it. This year, not one engine failure all year long that I can think of, so the engine shop has done a great job in getting our reliability better and also making good power, but we just didn't run well as a team. So we were on that same marker of maybe being in or not being in, but it wasn't because of engine failures. It's just because we weren't running very well. So when you don't make the Chase and you're not running very well it's easier to accept. Q: Revert back to Charlotte last week for a moment. You guys were put in a tough situation as drivers. Is there a fix for what we saw? Could something have prevented that? McMurray: Yeah, I think Humpy and Bruton are the best promoters in our sport. If you go to any of their racetracks they put on an incredible show. If they put me in charge of fixing Charlotte, what I'd love to see them do is find the asphalt that they paved Rockingham and paved Darlington with and let us go run wide open for one lap in qualifying and one lap every time we put tires on, and then the tires go away and slow down three seconds a lap. Those are the most fun places to race. That was the way Charlotte was before. It was the most heat-sensitive racetrack we went to. Like Indy was, where you pick up a second when the sun went down or you caught a cloud. That's fun. That's really good racing. That's what so fun about Darlington and Rockingham, the surface. I'd love to see them figure out a way to go pave it like those racetracks. Q: Did that track (Lowe's Motor Speedway) need to be ground? It was bumpy, I know. McMurray: You know what, it's easy for drivers that go there twice a year to say, 'I don't know why they did that.' I've never seen a promoter spend money on a racetrack that didn't need to be fixed. So they obviously felt as if it needed to be fixed. It hadn't been paved in a long time. I thought it was great, as rough as it was, but there was definitely a reason they did it. I don't know what levigating costs, but I'm sure it's expensive. And they didn't do that just to try something. They felt like it needed to be fixed. Q: Are you planning to continue driving Rusty Wallace's Busch Series car in 2006? McMurray: That is the plan right now. I've told Rusty that's what I want to do. I really, really enjoy getting to be involved and associated with Rusty. He has an incredible fan base and, to me, is an icon in our sport and a guy that you can learn from, not only with chassis setups and on-track stuff, but just how he deals with race fans and with sponsors and people in general. Rusty Wallace is the king of that. Top Flite's been a fun sponsor. I've gotten into golf this year... Q: What's your handicap? McMurray: My swing (laughing). Q: Sounds like a ready-made answer, right there, man. McMurray: When you have a golf sponsor you get asked that a lot. Actually, I was somewhere recently and someone asked me what my handicap was, and my Dad was in the background and yelled, 'His swing!' But that's been a fun sponsor to work with. That's really important in our sport, when you get involved with sponsors you enjoy working with, and that's a fun product. That's nice. That's a good relationship. And man, this time last year I won two of the last three Busch races and finished second in the last one. That team was just doing so well. The Busch team, kind of like my Cup team, we just haven't hit on it this year. The only common factor is me in all that. We just really want to get that Busch team back on track. I believe they're in the process of hiring a new crew chief for that, an engineer and a shock guy. Rusty's really putting a lot of focus on his Busch team right now, the fact that he's not racing next year. He's trying to get Steven going, trying to get that program back on track. Q: One more quick thing. Mark Martin, at New Hampshire when this whole Roush Racing story went down, told me he had Roush go after you, that you were the guy he wanted to replace him in the 6. That's Mark Martin, man. That has to feel good. McMurray: That's really cool. I'd been talking to Mark for a couple years, and for about the last year he'd been telling me, 'Man, you're the hottest guy on the market.' And you have people tell you that a lot, kind of blow smoke up your butt, so you just go with the flow. But the 6 car has a lot of history to it, and it's really cool to have a guy like Mark Martin -- to me, Mark and Rusty are two-of-a-kind. The came in at the same time and have been in the same cars since they started. The No. 2 will always be Rusty's number and the 6 will always be Mark's. No matter who drives those cars that's what you're always going to think. So for him to say that, I love Mark Martin quotes because they come from the heart. He's brutally honest and when he says good things they're really good, and when he wants to say something bad he makes it bad. Mark has become a really good friend of mine and even though I might not be in the 6 car, it made me feel really good that the guy that's been at Roush the longest and built that program asked me to drive his car. | 
