Rome wasn’t built in a day.
You have to learn to walk before you can run.
Take it one day at a time.
Those are only a few sayings that might apply to Jamie McMurray and his No. 26 Crown Royal team after a vastly improved second season with Roush Fenway Racing. After going winless in 2006, McMurray won the second race of his NASCAR Nextel Cup career and first with Roush Fenway in heart-stopping fashion. McMurray was door-to-door with Kyle Busch down the frontstretch before barely edging out front to win the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway by .005 seconds. That ended a 166-race winless drought and helped establish some stability for McMurray, who appeared to gel with new crew chief Larry Carter right from the start.
Even though McMurray got caught in a multi-car accident in the season-opening Daytona 500 and struggled to a 37th-place finish at California, he posted five top-10 finishes during the next seven races to put himself in Chase contention. He did not make the 12-driver cutoff, but still managed a 17th-place finish in the point standings—eight spots higher than the previous year.
In all, McMurray registered nine top-10 finishes, three top-5 efforts and one pole (Infineon) in 2007 while upping his career numbers to two wins, 27 top-5’s and 64 top-10s.
Like many of his fellow Cup competitors, McMurray is also a fixture in the NASCAR Nationwide Series and will be again in ‘08 as he runs a limited schedule.
McMurray set the world of NASCAR on its ear in ‘02 when he substituted for an injured Sterling Marlin and won the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway in only his second series start. McMurray held off a hard-charging Bobby Labonte to become the 11th driver to win a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race in either his first or second start. It also marked the first time anyone had done that in the modern era, which is recognized as 1972-present.
Even though McMurray won for the first time in ‘02, since he only competed in six races that season he retained his rookie status, which enabled him to edge current teammate Greg Biffle and claim the Raybestos Rookie of the Year honor in ‘03 after posting one pole, 13 top-10 and five top-five finishes.
Same as Biffle, McMurray is part of a select group who has won at least one race in all three of NASCAR’s major divisions, but the order in which he did it was unique. After winning his Cup race at Charlotte on Oct. 13, 2002, McMurray won his first Busch Series event two weeks later on Oct. 26 at Atlanta. He completed the trifecta by capturing the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series event at Martinsville in ‘04.
Like many drivers, McMurray got the racing bug at age eight when he started racing go-karts in his home state of Missouri. The Joplin native began earning a reputation as someone to watch when he won four U.S. Go-Kart championships and one World Go-Kart championship by the time he was 16.
During that period between 1986-92, McMurray also had the opportunity to represent the United States in an international karting competition in the former Soviet Union.
McMurray graduated to stock cars in ‘92 and emerged as a standout at I-44 Speedway in Missouri, where he won the track championship in ‘97. He made his NASCAR debut by competing in five Craftsman Truck Series events in ‘99.
Off the race track McMurray supports the Autism Society of America and makes a number of personal appearances on a yearly basis to generate research money for that organization.
