The oddest thing about Jamie McMurray's return to Chip Ganassi's race team wasn't his reunion with a car owner he had split with five years earlier. They had parted on good terms, with Ganassi telling the driver that he couldn't match what Roush Fenway was offering him, and to take advantage of the opportunity. McMurray would send his old boss occasional text messages, congratulating him on a victory in an IndyCar event or the 24-hour Daytona sports-car race.

"I kept that friendship," McMurray said. "You just never know."

“

Probably in Juan's case, it's a good thing Ganassi hired me, because the Chase would have been hell.

”

-- JAMIE MCMURRAY

So no, it wasn't strange at all that a driver and a car owner with a mutual affinity for one another would one day reunite. The oddity had to be sitting up on a stage and being introduced next to his new teammate at Earnhardt Ganassi Racing -- Juan Montoya. Because the last time the two drivers had been that close in proximity, one was putting the other into the wall.

"Probably in Juan's case, it's a good thing Ganassi hired me," McMurray joked, "because the Chase would have been hell."

It would have been difficult to imagine McMurray and Montoya as peaceful teammates a little more than a year ago, after the most recent spring race at Bristol Motor Speedway. Montoya wanted to advance a position on the half-mile race track, and he thought McMurray was holding him up. On Lap 123, they bumped. Then Montoya dropped behind McMurray, applied a gentle love tap to the left-rear bumper of the No. 26 car, and spun his future teammate into the wall.

Hard feelings? You bet. They joke about it now, after the strange confluence of events that brought them together. McMurray, who's watched Formula One racing on television for years, said he was one of the first NASCAR regulars to introduce himself to Montoya when he heard the Colombian was making the move to stock cars. He wanted to offer whatever help he could, and hear stories about the F1 lifestyle. They had even struck up something approaching a friendship -- until that Sunday afternoon at Bristol. (Continued)