By Paul Schmidt
For Jamie McMurray, it was a whirlwind week. After running well in the Shootout races to qualify for the Daytona 500, McMurray used an unbelievable late surge to get into the lead and hold off a charging Dale Earnhardt Jr., and win his first Daytona 500 race.
The victory was only the fourth of McMurray’s nine season career, and it was obvious after the race just how much the win meant to him.
“It’s just really hard to explain like how special all this has been to me,” McMurray said. “I mean, winning the race was unbelievable, but everything else that goes along with it, whether it’s the talk shows or just the media coverage that you get for your team and your sponsor is unbelievable. To listen to the media tell their story of what they were thinking when they were watching the race, it’s just been awesome.”
McMurray had probably been viewed as a grinder, to use a basic term borrowed from poker. He was a driver that had made a living on the course, but hasn’t, over his career, been able to consistently win races. As for whether the public’s perception of him changed, it wasn’t something he was all that concerned about.
“Honestly, I don’t care. I don’t care how they view me as or what they view me as,” McMurray said. “You get in a racecar as a driver, and you drive your butt off every time you get in it. If you win the race, you win the race. If you don’t, you gave it everything you had. I mean, not to be negative, I just don’t care what they think.”
Whether or not McMurray cares what everyone thinks of him or not really ends up being a moot point — The public definitely wants more of the feel good story, as evidenced by all the public appearances he made after the race. His newfound popularity amongst people and even celebrities really started to sink in last week.
“I think getting to go do David Letterman and Regis and Kelly, when you walk in and you meet them, they will tell you they maybe watched the race, they know who you are immediately, it makes it all real,” McMurray said. “I honestly have been to New York before. I’ve walked around. I don’t know that I’ve ever been recognized. I can’t believe in just the 24 hours that I’ve been here the amount of people that have found me and have brought their USA Today paper up and had me sign it. I can’t believe how popular that race is and how, by winning it, how many people realize who you are all of a sudden.”
That brings up a really interesting point: That the Daytona 500, the sport’s biggest event, really mirrors the Kentucky Derby in that many, many people watch the race who are not regular NASCAR fans. What did McMurray have to say to the uninitiated, the audience that watches and thinks NASCAR isn’t a sport?
“I mean, everybody has an opinion of that. I’ll tell you, you know, does our sport require the same skills at football or baseball? No,” McMurray conceded. “I will tell you if you put any other athlete from any other sport in a racecar in Sonoma, California, when it’s 140 degrees in the car, you tell them to sit in there and drive their heart out for three hours, when they get out, they’re going to be as worn out as any sport that you can do.”
“Certainly there’s times when it’s easier than other times,” McMurray added. “It takes a different set of skills. The mental focus and the physical ability is different than other sports.”
One of the more heartwarming parts of the win for McMurray was the pure emotion that he showed after the race. He was completely overcome in the moment — A refreshing turn from an athlete in a society that doesn’t usually allow that type of vulnerability from its heroes. He did have, however, one resounding thought going through his mind with the waves of emotion.
“Well, to be honest, I was thinking, you need to stop crying and answer the questions is what was going through my head,” McMurray said with a laugh. “The harder you try, the worse it gets.”
“But honestly, I mean, I just had running through my head that I just won the Daytona 500,” McMurray continued. “I think the reason I got so emotional is because my wife had brought it up a couple of times earlier in the week, like, What is it going to mean if you win this race this weekend, if you win the Daytona 500? You know, I don’t know that I had ever asked myself that question before. So she asked me that a few times leading up to the race. Then we ran really well in the Shootout. You know, we had talked in the bus before the race, What if we win? Then all of a sudden it became a reality.”
McMurray paused to collect himself, again overcome by the sheer joy of winning NASCAR’s biggest spectacle.
“No driver is going to prepare himself for how he’s going to feel when he wins America’s biggest stock car race,” he said. “You get out in Victory Lane, and they stick the microphone in your face, and they ask you the question. I just, you know what, had a million things running through my head at once. I thought about Christy (his wife) asking me that question. I just broke down. It’s real, it’s actually happening.”