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McMurray's stock rises after victory
NASCAR driver will be free agent after season
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Published: November 6, 2009
TALLADEGA, Ala.
When Jamie McMurray got home Sunday night after his dramatic win at Talladega hours earlier, he turned to his wife, Christy, and asked what they should do to celebrate his first victory in nearly three years.
Champagne? A nice dinner?
Not exactly.
Christy went to the computer while her emotionally drained husband crawled into bed with the couple's two dogs.
Sorry, McMurray's partying days are long gone.
"I've grown up a lot the last four years," said McMurray, 33.
He hasn't really had a choice. His four seasons at Roush Fenway Racing have been uneven at best. He moved to Roush from Chip Ganassi Racing in 2006 to compete for a championship. It simply hasn't happened.
McMurray failed to make the Chase in each of his four seasons and started 2009 knowing he would likely be out of a job at the end of the year, when Roush trimmed its Cup operation from five cars to four as part of a NASCAR mandate to limit team size.
His impending departure, however, seemed to alleviate some of the tension between McMurray and Roush. Roush's tough love when McMurray struggled didn't produce the kinds of results Roush expected, leading him to do something unexpected: change tactics.
"He came to me and said, ‘Jamie, I have learned that some people are motivated by humiliation, some are motivated by kicking them in the butt and I've learned with you that you're motivated more by positive reinforcement more than me yelling at you,' " McMurray said.
Now the prerace talks between owner and driver are friendlier. There are handshakes, compliments and the occasional joke.
There was plenty to smile about in the fading twilight at Talladega, where McMurray avoided the usual carnage to pick up his first victory since the 2007 summer race at Daytona.
McMurray and Roush doused each other with champagne, and Roush sounded wistful talking about McMurray's impending departure.
"(It's) a great sadness, but I hope that we can win another race with Jamie, and certainly am happy for this one," Roush said. "The guys did a nice job. The car had speed in it, and they didn't make a mistake all day."
McMurray is well aware of the speculation he might be heading back to Ganassi, the place where he began his career. He said he still has a good relationship with Ganassi and Felix Sabates, and Sabates said recently that he held no grudge toward McMurray for his decision to leave for Roush.
The truth was, Ganassi wasn't that good at the time, and Roush was coming off a year in which all its cars got into the Chase.
"When Jamie went to Roush, they were on top of the world," Sabates said. "They had just won the championship."
McMurray said Wednesday that he expects an announcement on his future before the end of the season.
The Ganassi team he would head back to isn't the same one he left. McMurray has marveled at the success of EGR driver Juan Pablo Montoya, who is fourth in the Chase standings heading into this weekend's race at Texas.
"Ganassi's team right now is as good as anybody," he said.
And right now, McMurray is as good a free agent as there is in NASCAR.
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