While some drivers dread going to the restrictor plate tracks, Jamie McMurray is a driver that has had success at Talladega Superspeedway in the past with a pair of wins.
While some drivers think that McMurray heads there set to win, he says that you can’t go there with that mindset.
“I always go to plate tracks with the mindset of running second and pushing somebody to the win, and if the circumstances work out that you find yourself in the lead, it’s great,” McMurray explained. “But I don’t think you can be — I think you just have to be very open-minded and willing to help more than trying to get help. I think a lot of guys go to those tracks and want everyone to help them, but they don’t really want to return the favor, and I think it’s important to kind of have a different mentality with that, and you always want to try to help whoever is in front of you and work with them.”
Being able to run Talladega and be strong there wasn’t something that came automatically as McMurray recalled his first trip to Talladega.
“I just remember going there and knowing that you could run wide open around the track, and I had never been to a track that you could do that at,” he reclled. “It’s so hard to get used to, whether it was in the late models or doing the trucks, that you can run around the track and not ever let off. It’s hard to conceive that.”
McMurray said that first experience was a lot of fun to experience in the beginning of the year. He added that he was even more surprised, though, when he ended up caught in the middle of a 30-car pack running three-wide.
“That gets your attention, and it certainly requires a lot of focus,” he commented. “It’s a really cool place, really fun venue.”
Coming into the weekend, McMurray is looking for a good run as he only has two top-10s on the season so far.
“Well, I mean, our cars have been tremendously better,” he commented. “It’s been somewhat unfortunate that some of the races that we had really good cars — when I looked at Bristol with 50 laps to go and the 4 car losing an oil line in front of us, Martinsville with the 88 cutting a tire down and crashing in front of us. We’ve had really good cars at every race.”
McMurray credits the success to new crew chief Keith Rodden in helping the team step up their game. He also added that he feels positive on things so far this season in looking at his rookie teammate Kyle Larson’s success so far this year.
“Our cars have been good about everywhere, so that’s a great feeling to have in this sport because sometimes you have cars that are good at short tracks but not good at mile-and-a-halfs, so you dread those mile-and-a-half tracks because you know you’ve struggled with those,” he continued. “We’ve been good about everywhere, so yeah, really optimistic about everything for the rest of the year.”
