INDIANAPOLIS -- Jamie McMurray's victory at Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday provided a slight boost to his hopes of qualifying for NASCAR's year-end championship playoff. The Brickyard 400 win lifted the Earnhardt Ganassi driver two positions in the standings, and pulled him within 151 points of the final berth in the Chase.

Not that he noticed.

“

Getting to win the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 means more to me this year than making the Chase.

”

-- JAMIE MCMURRAY

In the aftermath of his win at Indianapolis, it became quite clear that this season will go down as a rousing success for McMurray whether he makes the Chase or not. He's now one of only three drivers -- along with Dale Jarrett and Jimmie Johnson -- to sweep two of the biggest events of the NASCAR season, adding the Brickyard triumph to the Daytona 500 crown he earned five months ago.

The Chase is still out there, a possibility for McMurray -- granted, a somewhat remote one -- with six races remaining until the championship field is determined following the event at Richmond on Sept. 11. But if he's left on the outside looking in that night, he'll be far from disappointed.

"I view the Chase differently, I think," he said. "Every time I pay attention to points, we run 30th. I don't even really care where we're at in points. I think you show up every week, do your job. If you make the Chase, that's wonderful. Everyone wants to make the Chase. Getting to win the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 means more to me this year than making the Chase. This year or in 10 years, the guy that won [those races are the one] everybody will talk about. The guy that finished third in the points, nobody cares. I would really like to be in the Chase, but I have no focus on that at all. I know Bono doesn't want to hear that, but I don't."

Bono would be crew chief Kevin Manion, who's paid to worry about making the Chase. The No. 1 team is scheduled to go road-course testing Monday in preparation for the event at Watkins Glen International in two weeks. McMurray's victory Sunday marked his second consecutive top-five finish after a string of double-digit results, and not even his new gold brick trophy could lift him above 16th in the standings.

"It's going to be tough," Manion admitted. "But consistency is the key to making the Chase. We had a string there, second, 34th, second, 30th. The seconds are cool, but the 30ths don't cut it. I think there's six more races to the Chase, or five. It's just going to be five top-fives. We picked up another 30 points today. Thirty times five is 150. We're 151 out. It's going to take some good, strong runs. That's all I got to say."

The Brickyard resulted in no real shuffle in the standings, with a swap among now-third-place Denny Hamlin and fourth-place Jimmie Johnson the only movement within the top 12. Dale Earnhardt Jr., in Chase position as recently as two weeks ago prior to the event at Chicagoland, slipped another spot to 14th after being collected in Juan Montoya's late accident and finishing 27th.

What did the accident do to his Chase chances?

"No reason to worry, it does what it does to it. Ain't too much I can do about it. It's disappointing, of course, but I ain't going to damn worry about it," said Earnhardt, who was bidding for a top-10 finish before the crash.

"The finish is a [expletive] ut what are you going to do? I can't help what happened to me out there. I didn't do it to myself this time. My crew was good, and we had made some adjustments on the car, and we had actually made it better. We're getting better. We're still missing a little bit, but we're getting better. We ran like crap [at Chicagoland], real, real bad, so it was good to run better. That's about as good as I think we are right there. We've just got to find a little more. We're learning. If we keep having this kind of luck, we're not going to make the Chase, but that's something we'll have to live with. But we'll keep working to try and make it."

So, obviously, will McMurray, but it also seems clear that it won't beat himself up if he doesn't make it. And who can blame him? He's scored two of racing's crown jewels for car owner Chip Ganassi, who also won the Indianapolis 500 with Dario Franchitti. That trifecta, Brickyard runner-up Kevin Harvick said, will not be matched.

"To win all those in one year is remarkable," he said. "It probably will never happen again."

McMurray doesn't disagree.

"It mostly likely won't," he said. "... This race, the Daytona 500, and the Indy 500 are races of strategy. You see guys dominate those races and not win. So it's just remarkable what he's been able to put together and the people he's been able to hire. I feel very honored to be a part of that accomplishment."