Can Jamie McMurray go Back Home Once Again?
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Now, this could be real interesting.
My sources in Charlotte tell me Jamie McMurray, soon to be formerly of Roush Fenway Racing (due to NASCAR mandate that the organization reduce from five to four teams by 2010), is heading to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing for next year.
McMurray reportedly will drive the No. 1 car, whose seat is being vacated by Martin Truex Jr., who is also jumping ship at season’s end, moving to Michael Waltrip Racing in 2010.
McMurray has long been one of those guys like Elliott Sadler, Robby Gordon and others that were considered budding stars early in their careers in the Cup series – only they’ve never quite fulfilled that prophecy. Actually, they haven’t even come close.
McMurray began his Cup career with Chip Ganassi Racing, moved to Roush Racing (before it became Roush Fenway Racing) but only after a contentious battle over being allowed to break his contract, and now he’s reportedly heading back to be reunited with his old boss, the Chipster.
See what I mean about McMurray coming back home. If the rumors are indeed true, Chip has apparently forgiven Jamie and forgotten what happened in the past.
Much like Sadler, McMurray has been somewhat of an enigma. He was trumpeted for his talent at the beginning of his career. When he won in just his second Cup start back in 2002 – replacing the injured Sterling Marlin – predictions jumped sky high that McMurray would be the next big young gun.
Unfortunately, he has a grand total of just two wins (the other being at Daytona in the summer of 2007). Not very much to write home about, indeed.
But there is an interesting stat that kind of surprises me. Even though he’s only had three top-10 finishes this season, McMurray actually has 78 career top-10s, meaning that he’s finished in the top-10 in more than one-fourth of his 253 Cup starts to date.
That’s actually surprising, because I never would have picked Jamie Mac to have achieved that type of success, given the overall lack of performance he seemingly has had in his Cup career.
Of course, most of those top-10s came early on in his career while with Ganassi in their first go-round. From 2003 to 2005, Jamie had 50 top-10 finishes, and consecutive final season finishes in the Cup standings of 13th, 11th and 12th, respectively. Since then, he’s had 30 top-10s over his nearly full four-year run with Roush, with his best season finish with Roush being 17th in 2007.
McMurray is currently 25th in this year’s standings, which if it stays that way in the remaining five races of the season, would equal his worst single season finish – ironically enough, his first year with Roush, back in 2006.
If the reports are true that he really is heading to Earnhardt Ganassi, it will definitely be a homecoming of sorts for McMurray. And, who knows, maybe, just maybe, the same kind of good fortune he had in his first tenure with the Chipster might return.
A lot of people felt McMurray left far too early for Roush, that he gave up on Ganassi because he felt moving to Roush would take him to the next level in his career. In other words, you couldn’t keep him down on the farm after he saw the bright lights of New York, parenthetically speaking, of course.
As it turns out, that next level for McMurray when he went to the Roush camp was downward, not upward.
Paired with Juan Pablo Montoya, McMurray would climb out of the five-driver shadow he’s been in at Roush.
And maybe, just maybe (again), he’ll start to show some of the talent that he showed earlier in his career, but lost somewhere along the way between Ganassi and Roush.
Posted by Jerry Bonkowski on 10/21 at 11:10 PM
