Photo Credit: Justin McFarland
Last season Jamie McMurray driver of the No.1 McDonalds Chevrolet, for Chip Ganassi Racing made the chase for the Sprint Cup last season and feels like he has learned a lot from that. One thing he learned was he needs to be a little aggressive at times.
“When I look back at our Chase last year, I felt like every year that I had watched the Chase prior to that, that there were always guys that self-eliminated themselves from it,” McMurray said. “Sometimes it was from a pit road incident. It could have been an engine failure; sometimes, just getting caught up in an accident. Our plan going into that was to just be consistent and we did a really good job of that. I think we finished like 12th, 12th, and 4th; and I tied or missed it by one point of advancing to the next round.
“If you had given me those three finishes prior to it starting, I would have taken it. I just through that would have guaranteed you to make it through to the next round. So, I think going into this year and maybe just being a little more aggressive and trying to get a little more out of it; when I look back at those races, I don’t know that I could have done anything different. But yeah, just trying to maybe be a little more aggressive.”
Chip Ganassi Racing isn’t doing so well this season. McMurray and teammate Kyle Larson are both talented drivers and its frustrating to have a bad race week after week. McMurray feels like they really need to work on their 1.5 mile program because if they can get that going right then it will carry them through the road courses as well as the short tracks.
“Well, if I knew the answer to that we would go fix it,” McMurray said. “If you knew where you were missing it, you would certainly address those problems and get it fixed and everything would be fine. I think that when you are off a little bit, it’s not in one area. It’s maybe a little bit of everywhere. This weekend will be a big weekend. We’ve made some really big steps, I feel like, heading into Kansas, set-up wise. They’ve learned quite a bit of stuff in the wind tunnel that we are going to apply this weekend that I think will make a big difference.
“And I’ve said this for the last couple of years and over the winter, that to me, if you can get your 1.5-mile program good, it carries you through the road course and the short tracks and the superspeedways are such a crap shoot and you have to be a little bit lucky there. It’s just so important to be good at the 1.5-mile tracks and we have not been good at those for the last couple of years.
“In 2014, Kyle’s first year, our 1.5-mile program was good. We had a legitimate shot to win four or five races; both cars had a chance to win. I won the All-Star race in 2014. So, it was really good then and it’s slowly got worse through 2015. We thought we made really big gains in the off-season and were looking forward to the new rules package, but we just have not had the speed, especially the long-run speed, that we have needed this year.”
With the introduction of the new low downforce package, there was a lot of talk about cars losing downforce. NASCAR said the drivers would be able to find the downforce and add it back to the car. McMurray feels like some have where others haven’t.
“I don’t know,” McMurray said. “You would have to ask somebody higher up the ladder than me on that. I know that every weekend you find some. The interesting part about when they take downforce away and you find more is that it doesn’t always produce the lap time that you had before that. I don’t know how much they have found back.”
McMurray feels that with the new rules package that some teams have found something that works for them and their cars where other’s haven’t yet.
“When I look back, 2014, early 2015 the Gibbs cars were kind of in a struggling period and Denny (Hamlin) won the All-Star race last year and then Kyle (Busch) came back shortly after that,” McMurray said. “It just seems like since that point they have been the cars to beat. The No. 4 car (Kevin Harvick) has still been really quick. Maybe not quite as quick as he was last year, but he is still fairly quick, but the Gibbs cars just since last May have been the cars to beat. I don’t know. Our whole sport is a wave. I think a lot of times if you people are being completely honest and you went to Gibbs or the Hendrick or whatever team it is and ask why they are running so well they don’t always know. When things aren’t going well they don’t know either. If we knew that we would never have any fluctuation. You would just always know what to work on. Kind of like when Lee (Spencer, reporter) is asking me where the problem is. I don’t think it’s ever in just one area. When things are good it’s never just because of one area you just have your simulation is good, your tire data is good, the aero side, just everything is working it just kind of goes both ways.
“So, the rules package to me has been a homerun. I hear rumors that there is talk that we could take more downforce off. Kind of going back to what that gentleman asked me about how much we have gained back, we took quite a bit away. I know that there has been quite a bit found back. I think the goal is to try to take the same step again or maybe even more. The difference on the track is when you get behind guys you still struggle, but it’s nothing like what we had last year. To me the big difference now is that you are able to kind of work someone over and pass them, where last year you didn’t even get the opportunity to try to pass. You could be two to three tenths quicker and you would get within that three or four car lengths and you didn’t really know what was going on. You just couldn’t get any closer. So, yeah, to me the rules package has been a homerun.
“I think the racing has been way better, not only for the leader, but for the guys even racing for 20th. There has just been more racing going on. Richmond was one… I think I finished 15th at Richmond and it was one of the funniest races I’ve run in a long time just because of the tire fall off. It reminded me of Rockingham and Darlington where there were some guys that could really take off and then after 20 or 30 laps they would start fading. I was on the other end of that. I couldn’t go, but I was really good at the end of a run. There was a lot of passing going on the whole time. The track got really wide as well, which is a lot of fun.”
