When Jamie McMurray was paired with new crew chief Matt McCall ahead of the 2015 NASCAR Sprint Cup season, the extent of their familiarity with each other was fairly limited. Among the things they knew they had in common:
-- They both raced: McMurray in NASCAR's top division; McCall, still in occasional Super Late Model events.
-- Both of their last names began with "Mc."
-- They were both exceedingly polite.
Entering the 2016 season, both have a year together to build on, with the goal of pushing the Chip Ganassi Racing No. 1 Chevrolet outfit back into the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs.
"Obviously, this time last year it was a couple months and four or five conversations," McCall said last month during the Charlotte Motor Speedway preseason media tour. "So now we've gotten to yell at each other a bit and tell each other right and wrong, so I feel like the relationship's been able to grow pretty good. I'm pretty excited to go into this year with that relationship already being built."
McCall came to the Ganassi fold in November 2014 after a nearly two-year stint as an engineer for the Richard Childress Racing No. 31 team. The transition turned litigious, with Childress seeking to block the move in court before reaching a settlement less than two weeks before teams arrived at Daytona for season-opening Speedweeks.
With the path cleared for McCall's first full season atop a Sprint Cup pit box, the two went to work. McMurray rose to a high point of sixth place in the Sprint Cup standings by the time the season shifted back to Daytona for the midway mark. It was enough headway to help sew up the first Chase berth of McMurray's career as the top points-earner among drivers without a regular-season win.
With a complete 36-race schedule behind them, both driver and crew chief say they have a better grasp of each other's operating and communication style.
"Getting to have a year together and go through the goods and the bads and kind of learn from that and see how each other reacts to that, I for sure feel better about Matt right now than I did a year ago," McMurray said. "I didn't have any opinion because I didn't know him at the time, but he did a really exceptional job in his first year as a crew chief and does a really good job calling the races.
"He's also a great people person, and I think that's the most important characteristic you can have as a crew chief is to be able to manage your people. And Matt, I feel like, like most good crew chiefs has a really good following at our shop behind him now where people believe in him and want to support him."
McMurray ticked one checkbox last season by qualifying for his first Chase, but the No. 1 team was an early elimination after the opening three-race Round of 16. A deeper postseason run and a shot at his first points-paying victory since October 2013 remain on the list of targets for this season.
To check more boxes, driver and crew chief alike emphasized the need to adapt quickly to a new lower-downforce rules package while improving the team's aerodynamic savvy on the 1.5-mile tracks that make up a hefty portion of the Sprint Cup schedule. McMurray netted four top-five finishes on the intermediate-sized circuits in 2014, but none last season.
"I feel like that's one of the strides we've tried to make gains on in the offseason," McCall said, pointing toward the second race of the season as a litmus test. "Once we get to Atlanta, we'll find out if that's true or not."