CONCORD, N.C. -- For Jamie McMurray's race team, missing the Chase has come with a few benefits. Being outside the championship picture has allowed crew chief Kevin Manion to experiment with his setups, as he did for Saturday night's event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The result was another victory for a No. 1 team that now owns a trio of trophies from events on NASCAR's biggest tracks.

"Just a breath of fresh air in lining things up for 2011," Manion said in the aftermath of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing's fourth victory of the season. When that 2011 season begins, though, everything will change. With a flip of a page on the calendar, McMurray suddenly vaults from party-crasher to expected championship contender, thanks to the strength of his exploits this year.

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I really haven't thought about next year. You know, [we're] just working on the remainder of this season, and I just ... I don't know. I don't think you should put the cart in front of the horse.

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-- JAMIE MCMURRAY

Right now, though, he'd prefer to focus on the present.

"I really haven't thought about next year," he said after the Charlotte victory. "You know, [we're] just working on the remainder of this season, and I just ... I don't know. I don't think you should put the cart in front of the horse. You take this one week at a time. And we have so many different kind of race tracks coming up. Like Martinsville next week, and Talladega, mile-and-a-half tracks, Phoenix. There's so much different stuff coming up, I really have not put much thought into next season."

This year has been a dream for McMurray, whose surprise victory in the Daytona 500 opened a campaign that also saw him take the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis as well as Saturday night's event at Charlotte. The only blemish has been that the No. 1 team didn't show the consistency necessary to make the Chase; although McMurray was in contention for that final playoff berth until the last weekend of the regular season, he ultimately fell 127 points short.

But McMurray has said repeatedly that he wouldn't trade his victories this year for a Chase berth, and being outside the championship hunt has given Manion the freedom to toy with setup strategies he might never consider with a title on the line.

"We definitely have been experimenting outside of our baseline setup the last couple of weeks -- last week in California, this week," Manion said. "It's something we are working on. We just haven't perfected it. It did show great promise the other day. So it does definitely give you a little bit more freedom to experiment, make more riskier calls, fuel mileage and so on, so forth. But it also gives us time at the shop to actually take a breath and say, 'OK, we didn't make this Chase .... Now, what do we have to do for the next 10 races to still race good, but have a little bit of fun?' Because as you all know, it's a very trying and stressful job."

Might that experimentation pay dividends in 2011? Too soon to tell. But McMurray is pleased with his team's direction.

"I feel really good, obviously, about our mile-and-a-half stuff. We have a really good package to that," he said. "And like [Manion] said, we are testing some other stuff that is a fair amount different, and I think if we can get that to work, then that's probably going to be an advantage for us next season. So we are kind of working on that, but at the same time, we have got some stuff, really reliable stuff that really doesn't seem to have a lot of speed in it. So working on that right now."

There's also one other loose end to tie up -- McMurray's contract. The driver came to Ganassi on a one-year deal, and although he's certain to return, he's yet to officially sign anything.

"We are really close on that. It's not that I don't want to talk about it. It's just there's really not anything to discuss right now, and hopefully it will all be done soon. And when that is, we can kind of talk about it then," he said. "... It's just kind of a slow process to get all of that ironed out and working on a multi year deal with everybody, so [we] just have to wait until we get all that done."

It will happen in time, as will his attempt to make the Chase next season. For now, he's too busy savoring the best NASCAR campaign of his career to fret over future possibilities. Rather than think about contract issues or championship bids next year, he'd rather enjoy the best moments from this one -- like celebrating in Victory Lane on Saturday night in Charlotte, or remembering his personal favorite, that final lap at Indianapolis.

"It takes 50 seconds to go around there," McMurray said, "and the last 50 seconds at Indy was probably just one of the coolest things ever for me, to like savor that and know that it's going to happen."