RICHMOND, Va. — Short-track tensions at Richmond Raceway brought out a brief show of temper to two normally mild-mannered teammates: Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray of Chip Ganassi Racing.
Larson rallied late for a seventh-place finish and McMurray placed 19th in the Toyota Owners 400, but their skirmish under caution provided a spark to a frantic final push to the finish.
The conflict stemmed from the aftermath of Lap 367 mix-up, when Kurt Busch crowded McMurray’s No. 1 Chevrolet into Turn 2’s outside wall. McMurray slowed, Ryan Newman piled in and Larson took evasive action behind him.
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Larson bypassed McMurray to grab the free pass when the yellow flag flew two laps later for fluid from Newman’s car. One scrape prompted a retaliatory brush under caution from McMurray, who pulled his car alongside Larson’s No. 42 to express displeasure.
“We were all racing for the lucky dog there and honestly, when we went into (Turn) 1, Jamie got to the brakes so early, I thought he had blown a right-front (tire) or something because he had a lot of smoke,” Larson said. “I knew a caution was going to be coming out so I shot a little bit of a gap there and got through there just in time for the caution and then the lucky dog, and then we screwed that up on pit road.
“Jamie was, I guess, upset with me, but I’m sure he’s just frustrated with that whole lap in general because he was in lucky dog position and then pretty much got his car destroyed. I think he was just probably frustrated over the whole thing.”
Larson lost the lap he had regained when repairs on pit road took longer than expected. But he was the beneficiary again on the next-to-last caution, putting him in a position to log his fifth top-10 finish of the year.
McMurray held on to finish on the lead lap, but came home 19th for the second straight week. He exited his car quickly to leave the track, but in response to a question from ESPN’s Bob Pockrass if anything was going on between the two, McMurray said, “nothing.”
“I didn’t see him to talk to him, so I really don’t know,” Matt McCall, McMurray’s crew chief, told NASCAR.com. “I think he wasn’t sure because the 41 (Kurt Busch) put us in the fence and I don’t think he knew what happened when the 42 got below him there in (Turns) 1 and 2 when the caution came out, so I’m not real sure.”
Even though McCall didn’t have the full post-race context from his driver, he indicated that teammates aren’t immune from the heat of competition.
“We’re racing. We come to race, right?” McCall said. “So to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s your teammate or not, you’re racing out there. If he thinks he did something wrong, maybe it was letting him know. I don’t know.”