By Aaron Bearden, Motorsports Editor
Heading into Sunday’s race at Texas Motor Speedway, Jamie McMurray hadn’t even managed a top-15 finish, never mind a top five. Whether due to poor luck, bad performance or a combination of the two, the Missourian had finished no better than 16th in the opening six races of the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season.
He brought that streak of mediocrity to a screeching halt in No Limits, Texas.
McMurray survived the mid-race attrition and surged in the final 100 laps to claim a third-place finish in Sunday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts 500, bouncing back from his poor start to the year after the Easter off week.
“The off-weekend couldn’t have come at a better time for us,” McMurray said afterward. “We had such a horrible season going and it’s awesome to run as good as we did today at a 1.5-mile. We have so many of these and I feel like we have been a little bit behind on the 1.5-miles but had a really good run today.”
With Ford and Toyota dominating the early stretch of the season, Chevrolet’s McMurray was nowhere to be found on the list of contenders entering the weekend.
His 24th-place qualifying effort did little to change that going into Sunday’s race. But when the green flag waved, the 41-year-old began to rise into the conversation.
McMurray made his way into the top 10 in Stage 1, earning a seventh-place finish. The pit strategy seen at the end of Stage 2 kept the 2010 Daytona 500 winner from repeating his feat, but his No. 1 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet’s pace allowed him to rise through the field over the race’s final stage.
Mid-race attrition afforded the veteran a few positions, but the key to his late race rise came from his machine’s consistent speed on old tires.
“It’s hard to pass,” he said. “So, it takes a long time. You work on guys. Our car, fortunately, was pretty good on older tires.”
McMurray spent most of the final 50 laps inside of the top five. He pitted when the caution flew on Lap 305 for fresh tires, and rose to third over the ensuing run to the checkered to claim his best finish since his second-place run in the May 2017 race at Talladega Superspeedway. He hadn’t claimed a top-three run at a non-plate track since his runner-up result in Jeff Gordon’s final win at Martinsville Speedway in 2015.
Upon first glance McMurray’s run appear to be an unexpected rise. But the veteran claimed to have seen speed earlier in the year, albeit in less impressive doses.
“We ran okay at (Las) Vegas and Phoenix and blew a right-front at Vegas and then I had to pit with like 10 laps to go or eight laps to go at Phoenix and ended up losing a couple of laps because of another tire issue,” he said. “Then had to pit again at Martinsville because of a left-rear tire rub with like 10 laps to go.
“We have run okay. We certainly haven’t run as well as we did today. But, we have run okay this year.”
The CGR ace claims his Texas speed came after his team reverted to previous setups following a few tests of new concepts earlier in the year.
“We had some different stuff in our car,” he said. “You try to learn in the off season and some of the stuff that we tried at the beginning of the year didn’t work out. So, we went back to similar to what we had last year and we ran really well on the 1.5 miles and our performance was way better today than it has been all year long.
“So, hopefully we can continue to work with that set-up and those parts and perform each week.”