McMurray's focus leads to strong finish at Loudon

LOUDON, N.H. -- Sunday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway was perhaps the strangest opener in the seven-year history of the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and two of the biggest and most deserving beneficiaries of the wackiness ended up sharing the stage at the end.

After a swirling turn of events, Jamie McMurray ended up the best non-Chase driver in the Sylvania 300, finishing third in his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet.

"This is one track that I normally race out of -- I actually run all the way to my car, because the traffic's bad [leaving the venue]" McMurray said, "but I'm OK going to the media center."

And when Denny Hamlin -- who arrived at the track leading the points and finished the race still in the lead -- met McMurray for their post-race media session, there was a delay before the news conference could begin.

Both men were almost giddy as they sat patiently in the media center, waiting for other interviews on pit road to wrap up. They were swapping notes on their respective races behind winner Clint Bowyer and constantly laughing, or at the very least, broadly smiling.

Well into the latter stages of the race, both men had been knocked back beyond 20th position. Hamlin was run into by fellow Chaser Carl Edwards and spun out in Turn 4 on Lap 214, but thanks to five of the race's eight cautions in a 38-lap period from Lap 208 to 246 -- as well as having cars as good as they seemed earlier -- both drivers pulled out great finishes.

But this is the Chase, and after making his initial statement, McMurray had to sit and listen to the media bombard Hamlin with Chase-related questions; their races weren't the only things that were close to the same.

"My feelings were the same as what Denny had," McMurray said of his emotions after being assessed a speeding penalty while entering pit road on Lap 208. "When you go back to 22nd, I was thinking I could still get to the top 10. I knew I didn't have a chance to win, but I thought maybe I could get back to the top five. And then the cautions just fell right."

McMurray took the lead from Tony Stewart, who had the dominant car at that moment and was out front for 10 laps. But something had happened to McMurray's car.

"When I passed [Stewart] for the lead, I really thought I was going to be able to drive away," McMurray said. "I ran a couple laps there and opened up about 10 car [lengths] and I drove into Turn 1 and the splitter started crashing the ground. So I'm just going to assume that a bump stop or something maybe failed and just let the car over-travel.

"The whole last run, I couldn't really use any brakes. If I pushed on the brake hard at all, it would make the splitter crash into the ground."

That enabled Hamlin to catch and pass him, but considering McMurray's last top-10 at New Hampshire had come in this race in 2004 -- and he hadn't led a lap previously in his past 14 races -- this was a good day.

"This has been my worst track, actually -- if you look at the average finish at each track," McMurray said. "But the engineering department at Ganassi came up with a few small things for us to try, we had a little bit different setup on our car this weekend and man, this is a track where if you qualify well and get good track position, you typically get a good finish.

"We qualified well and then we lost [track position] because I sped on pit road, and then got it right back with the way the pit strategy worked out. So it was just a good weekend -- I had to be a little bit lucky."

The day was wild on restarts, with only a couple exceptions.

"I only started outside the top three on one restart -- most restarts I started on the outside of the front row," McMurray said. "So it's a lot different when you start in the first couple of rows because guys are willing to give and take a little bit.

"I did have one restart in 25th, and it's significantly different. The thing about this race track is that you race on the apron at certain points in the race. However, on the restarts, this is like the worst track that we go to for getting the car going.

"I mean, you saw two or three guys spin out Friday just leaving the pits because it's so slick, and when the inside guy enters on the apron, it's really hard to hang onto your car. So it's different than what you see at Pocono when people talk about wild restarts. Here, it's just hard to keep the car underneath you."

Finally, McMurray -- who's been close a number of times but never made the Chase -- had to field some Chase-related questions of his own, saying that racing Chase contenders on Sunday actually worked in his favor.

"Yeah, honestly you probably can be more aggressive around the Chase guys because they're thinking differently than what the guys are that are not in the Chase," McMurray said. "But really, I didn't -- over the last few years, you don't think about that until it comes down to the last two or three races.

"There's a ton of racing left -- a lot can happen, even in two or three races. So really until it gets down until the last couple of races, I don't pay a tremendous amount of attention to that."

But he is paying attention to winning -- and fending off questions, even as he races so well, of not being in the Chase. For the umpteenth time, McMurray said he wouldn't trade places with anyone currently in the Chase, at the expense of his two big wins this season at Daytona and Indianapolis.

"What I said was that I wouldn't trade winning those races to be in the Chase and finish 10th -- and I still wouldn't trade those two wins to be in the Chase right now," McMurray said. "It's a really big deal to win those two races. To win Loudon is a big deal, but it's still not the Daytona 500 or the Brickyard 400 -- [so] no, I still wouldn't [trade them to be in the Chase]."

Finally, McMurray said he wouldn't draw much more satisfaction from winning one of the last nine races.

"I don't know if [winning now] would be any different than it would be before the Chase," McMurray said. "Your goal, if you don't make the Chase, is to still finish as high as you can in the points, and it certainly will be interesting to see where we'd end up in the points, not being in the Chase, if we run well in the next nine races, [but right now] I'm really looking forward to Dover."

McMurray left New Hampshire 14th in the standings, one place behind Ryan Newman, who finished eighth on Sunday.

Related:
• Press Pass: McMurray at Loudon