Jamie McMurray: "Everybody thinks their season is going to be better -- but our team is going to be better." Credit: Autostock

Preview: McMurray

Performance is there, but finishing races is top priority

Jamie McMurray has made one simple resolution for the 2005 Nextel Cup Series season.

"We either want to be locked in to the Chase (for the Nextel Cup) real early, or completely out of it by August," McMurray said. "We don't want to go through what we went through last year."

McMurray, who's been tabbed by a number of garage-area insiders as one of the leading "drivers to watch" this season, missed 2004's inaugural Chase for the Cup by a scant 15 points.

But his team, led by crew chief Donnie Wingo, proved its worth by notching eight top-10 finishes in the last 10 races of last season.

	Credit: Autostock
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While the strong finish gave the team plenty of momentum for 2005, missing the Chase by such a narrow margin has affected a number of things in McMurray's point of view.

"For my team, just leading a lap in three other races (in 2004) would have put us in (the Chase) -- or finishing one spot better (in three races) and we would have made it," McMurray said. "I think that's our mentality, to go out and lead as many races as we can to get those bonus points."

McMurray led only 10 of 36 races a year ago, while scoring nine top fives and 23 top 10s.

A lot of fingers were pointed after the Chase cutoff event at Richmond, where McMurray's car suffered an engine problem late in the race and slipped back through the field to a ninth-place finish.

Rather than focus on that, McMurray figured any one of the six DNFs the team had might have made the difference, and again, it's changed the team's focus for this season.

"If you have problems, don't give up," McMurray said. "We had that same mentality last year, but when you go through what we did it makes you think about it a little more.

"For our team, I think our performance is good enough -- we just need to work on finishing more races."

Looking at the Daytona 500, where he was an innocent bystander swept into a major accident, McMurray knows it's a key place to get off on the right foot -- but he's not exactly sure how to do it.

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"Our weakest point right now is superspeedway races," McMurray said during Preseason Thunder at Daytona. "I don't mind coming to these (and) I enjoy the racing part of it. I don't know if I put myself in a bad position, but I always seem to get caught up in the wreck.

"I think that's a big focus for us. Last year it was road course races and we finished second at Sonoma. We really tried hard at those and tested all of them, so we're going to try to do the same thing at the superspeedways this year."

As it is with the every competitor in the garage, McMurray is concerned about the new shorter rear spoiler mandated for this season at all tracks except superspeedways, along with a different tire combination and a gear rule aimed at reducing engine RPMs.

He pointed at next week's tests at Las Vegas and California as critical to the early portion of the season after Daytona -- where McMurray and all the Dodge teams will debut their new Charger racecar.

"I think we're testing four days in a row (and) that's going to be really important," McMurray said. "Obviously we have a new car and they cut an inch off the rear spoiler.

"Casey (Mears, Ganassi teammate) has tested it a little bit, but the cars don't drive as good as they did last year.

"It's going to be important to go there and just try to get good balance. The fact that test is going to be so close to the race date -- then we come straight to Daytona -- if you have a good test there you pretty much know when you go back you're going to race well.

	Credit: Autostock
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"Guys are not going to have time to go back and cut up cars and try to do something different (so) those first two tests for the majority of the teams are going to be very important."

Despite what amounted to a career year in 2004, McMurray acknowledged that team owner Chip Ganassi, who owns five Indy car championships, probably has higher expectations for this season.

"He's very used to winning (but) he understands it isn't going to happen overnight," McMurray said. "This sport is an up and down deal. Sometimes everything goes your way, and sometimes it doesn't.

"For our race team, we started a Busch team last year. They changed our cars around completely from what we ran in 2003. We moved into a new building. We had a lot going on last year, and I don't know if that set us back but it definitely didn't let us move forward the way we needed to.

"This year the Busch team is established. All of our cars are way ahead of where they were last year, and we're in our new building. Right now we're doing a lot of research and development and making our cars better."

McMurray went so far as to guarantee better things for his outfit.

"Everybody thinks their season is going to be better -- but our team is going to be better," he said. "One of our weaknesses last year was pit stops, not only for my team but for all three (Ganassi) teams.

"They have taken that program in and hired a lot of new people and they feel like that's going to be a big difference this year. As much as we did last year it was hard to move forward. The fact we're all moved in right now, we're moving forward and we should get better."

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