Car owner Chip Ganassi got the expected result from an unexpected source in Sunday’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as race winner Jamie McMurray joined one of Cup racing’s most exclusive clubs.
Restarting second thanks to a two-tire call on a Lap 140 pit stop, McMurray powered his No. 1 Earnhardt Ganassi Racing Chevrolet past Kevin Harvick’s No. 29 Chevy on a restart with 11 laps left and pulled away to beat Harvick to the finish line by 1.391 seconds.
McMurray gave Ganassi his first Daytona 500 win in February. In May, Dario Franchitti won the Indianapolis 500 in one of Ganassi’s cars. On Sunday, Ganassi hit the unprecedented trifecta. No other car owner has won all three major races, much less in the same year.
At the same time, McMurray joined Dale Jarrett (1996) and Jimmie Johnson (2006) as the only drivers to win the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same year. NASCAR.com
“I am just shocked that I won the Daytona 500 and the Brickyard 400 in the same year,” said McMurray, who at this time last season was still looking for a job for 2010. He was hired to drive the No. 1 Chevrolet for Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing just before the November season finale.
“It’s been an unbelievable year,” he said.
“I need oxygen!” Ganassi said from pit road after the victory. “I don’t know what to say. My heart goes out to Juan, he had a great day, too.
“But I’ll tell you, this is a big, big day for our team.”
Montoya led 86 of 160 laps around the two-and-a-half-mile track, but he gave up the lead when a caution for debris with 23 laps remaining sent the field to pit road. His crew chief, Brian Pattie, called for four tires, but the first six drivers off pit road took only two.
The strategy put McMurray out front on the restart with 18 laps left, and Montoya was seventh. Trying hard to force his Chevrolet through traffic and back to the front, Montoya lost control and crashed hard into the wall with 15 laps left.
“I don’t know what happened to Juan, he obviously had the dominant car again, and it’s horrible the luck he’s having,” McMurray said in victory lane. New York Times
Montoya led just before the final round of stops, but his crew chief, Brian Pattie, elected to put four tires on Montoya’s car, while the other leaders took just two tires. Montoya restarted in seventh, but fell back in the field before his incident.
“Bad call; crew chief error,” Pattie said. “We should have taken two tires.”
Montoya, who finished 32nd, did not comment after the race.
Last year, Montoya led 116 laps, but lost the race after he was penalized for speeding on pit road. He finished 11th.
Greg Biffle finished third, while Clint Bowyer and Tony Stewart rounded out the top-five.
Jeff Burton, Carl Edwards, Kyle Busch, who won Saturday’s Nationwide race at nearby O’Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, Joey Logano and Kurt Busch completed the top-10.
Earnhardt Jr.‘s late-race crash led to a 27th-place finish.
With his second-place finish, Harvick increased his lead to 184 points over Jeff Gordon, who finished 23rd. MiamiHerald.com
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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series: Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis - Race Results
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