McMurray Upbeat After Breaking Winless Streak At Daytona

JOLIET, Ill. — Tony Stewart’s appeal among NASCAR fans is the fact that he comes across as the average, ordinary guy.
Stewart is as comfortable in a bowling shirt as in his racing uniform, which is why it should be no great surprise how he celebrated Sunday’s victory at Chicagoland Speedway entering one of NASCAR’s few off weekends of the season.
“You have no idea how glad I am to have a week off,” Stewart said. “I’m taking this momentum on vacation. And I’ve got a case of Schlitz (beer) that I fully intend on getting to the bottom of the cardboard box tonight, even if I have to do it by myself. I don’t care. It’s going to happen. That’s if I don’t pass out first.”
No expensive micro-brews for Stewart; he prefers a beer that is so cheap, it’s hard to find it on the liquor-store shelves.
“You guys laugh at me like nobody drinks Schlitz anymore,” Stewart said. “The good thing is they stock it close to home, and it’s only about eight bucks a case, cold. And if you’ve got a couple of roommates and you’ve got seven in the fridge when you leave, you’ve got seven in the fridge when you get home.
“You're not supporting everybody else’s drinking habits. Mike Arning, my publicist, taught me how to drink responsibly. Thank you, Mike.”
 
• It had been nearly five years since Jamie McMurray won a Cup race. He snapped a 166-race winless drought with his victory at Daytona last Saturday night.
As he entered Chicagoland Speedway, McMurray was upbeat.
“It’s been a really busy week,” McMurray said. “I told Matt Kenseth that I didn’t mind doing all the call-ins and everything, because everything’s been positive, and it’s fun to talk about a win, and the way that we were able to win — it was so close. It was a pretty exciting finish, and it’s been real cool to talk about.”
Breaking a 166-race winless streak has also been a tremendous relief for the driver from Joplin, Mo.
“I didn’t think a lot about that before, and I haven’t really thought about it afterwards,” McMurray said. “We came close to winning a couple of races this year, and everyone has that throughout their career, where you come close and just different circumstances would’ve put you in victory lane. So, I haven’t thought about that a lot, but it is certainly nice to get that over with so I don’t have to talk about it with all of you.”
 

TO THE FRONT: Casey Mears captured his third-career Bud Pole on Friday. (Harold Hinson/HHP Photo)

• When McMurray took over for the injured Sterling Marlin in September 2002, he won his first Cup race in only his second Cup start at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.
Little did he know it would be so long before he got victory No. 2.
“When I look back through 2003, ’04, ’05, ’06, ’07, all the years – there were a lot of opportunities that we came close to winning,” McMurray recalled. “Races like the Brickyard, one year; Rockingham; Texas, we ran second. And certainly it’s disappointing. You can’t dwell on that.
“As long as you show up and you feel like you’re a contender — if you didn’t win — you have to look at the bright side of that. If a guy sits back and worries to death about not winning, he’s not focused on trying to win. I know it’s a big deal to all you guys, but I didn’t make a lot of that, because there’s nothing you can do about it.”
McMurray didn’t fare as well at Chicagoland, as he finished 38th.
 
• After finishing third in Sunday’s Cup race, Carl Edwards was asked to explain Kevin Harvick’s trash-talking comment after Harvick won Saturday’s Busch race.
“I never trash-talked,” Edwards said. “When Kevin won at New Hampshire, he made a couple of jabs, and someone asked me about that and I said I would really like to beat Kevin in the Busch race. It back-fired. We were just having fun.”

• Chicagoland winner Tony Stewart took advantage of the late starting time to sleep until 11 a.m. Sunday. That allowed him some extra hours of rest after he traveled to his race track, at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, with fellow driver Kasey Kahne on Saturday night.

• Casey Mears had it made in the shade, or at least he thought of it that way, as he won the pole Friday.
Shortly after his lap at 182.556 miles per hour in a Chevrolet knocked Martin Truex, Jr.’s Chevy off the pole, Mears commented that a small puffy cloud helped block the sun and cool the track on his hot lap. A cooler track allows a race car to run faster.
Or, at least, it sounds good.
“Sometimes I tell the guys to put a darker shield on my helmet so I think it’s cloudy out and I go faster,” Mears said. “If a cloud comes over and you count to five, it’s going to be a little quicker. It’s all in your head, but it makes you seem like you’re going faster when the clouds are out.”
— Ron Lemasters, Sr. contributed to this report.