Hard Charger

Can Jamie McMurray bring the goods to become NASCAR's next big star? He thinks so. And everyone else in the garage knows so

A Daytona garage during January testing is like a preschool class that has just been rudely awakened in the middle of nap time. The sleepy-eyed whining nearly drowns out the boom of 50 engines. And why not be grumpy? The previous season ended less than two months before. Most crewmen spent the holidays with a cup of eggnog in one hand and a welding torch in the other.

Still, this winter's session seems particularly raw. Jeff Gordon has openly questioned the amount of preparation time expended on the Daytona 500, a race that now barely factors into the new postseason format. Tony Stewart has gone him one better; he's just decided to stay away.

Beyond the gripes and moans, though, there's one stall at the far end of the garage that's all business. The only sounds are numbers shouted between mechanics and wrenches hitting concrete. The Texaco/Havoline Dodge team isn't complaining about the testing schedule or aero rules, or even the chill wind that has everyone donning parkas. They're too busy working their butts off. "We don't have time to worry about that other stuff," Jamie McMurray says, his voice crackling with intensity.

Every run-up to a new NASCAR season features one driver who attracts an outsize share of buzz from all points of the paddock, a popular sleeper pick who's never been a bona fide title contender but is now expected to bust his way into the big room. This year's designated gate-crasher is the 28-year-old McMurray-and he knows it. "We think this could be our year," he says. "Apparently a lot of other people do too. But it isn't going to happen unless we make it happen, now is it?"

NASCAR's latest It Boy is a study in contrasts. His entire career has unfolded with a unique sort of duality. He spends his days at 180 mph, but his nightlife is as exciting as a calculus lecture; he's the guy poring over tire data while his compatriots pour down cold ones. He drives for one of the most successful racing owners of the past decade yet seems to have one foot perpetually beneath the Ganassi Racing shop's exit sign. His on-track style is respected sportwide as the picture of calculated patience, but when it comes to navigating relationships in the garage, his fuse can be a nub. And while his looks and track record scream superstar, drivers lacking in both consistently score more pub.

But now, as the 2005 season begins, comes an entirely new level to the complex guy who is Jamie Mac. A racing life purposely spent under the radar is about to end. The next great one is ready for his close up.

These suddenly great garage expectations are the culmination of a two-year Cup career that sports one shocking debut and a list of nearmisses that would keep his mother's scrapbook from clearing tech inspection. A cracked cylinder head. A loose lugnut. A rear window a bit too big. And then there's those 15 freakin' points that kept him from the party. It's a list of heartbreaks so subtle the majority of NASCAR's fanbase don't even realize how close McMurray has come to compiling a stat sheet to rival Jimmie Johnson's.

The men on the blacktop, though, know to keep one eye on that famous Day-Glo Texaco star. "Anybody who isn't expecting Jamie to take off soon isn't paying attention," says Rusty Wallace. "I guarantee you the guys who made it into The Chase last fall will be paying attention. If he hadn't missed the cut, he would have kicked all their butts."

AH YES, the cut. McMurray's title chances ended last season on a mid-September Saturday in Richmond. Coming into the 400-lap race, eight drivers were grappling for the final three slots in the 10-man, end-of-the-season chase. McMurray sat 11th, a mere 25 points outside the elite. If he finished high enough at Richmond, all the valleys of a rollercoaster year wouldn't matter anymore. "We put on our game face and didn't look back," he says. "At least not until after the race was over."

With 30 laps to go, he was in. His Dodge Intrepid that had handled like a used Neon all weekend was now suddenly dialed in and racing inside the top five. And then an all-too-familiar feeling crept up his right leg, directly into the pit of his stomach. The 42 car was losing power.

As the laps ticked away McMurray dropped one position … then two … then three. An adjuster to a rocker arm in the engine, a nothing part, had broken. At the checkered flag, he was ninth in the race, and still 11th in the standings. "That night I lost it," he recalls with lingering irritation. "I was short with the team, with the media, with everyone around me. I spent the next week sitting up all night rerunning those final laps and reliving everything that had happened all season."

He remembered the engine failures, which his teammates, Sterling Marlin and Casey Mears, never seemed to have. By Aug. 1, at the 20th race of the season, he'd popped four motors; his teammates had one between them. He obsessed about a crew that had a knack of turning great days into good ones, and good days into junk. "I started looking at the numbers, all the way back to when I first got in a Cup car. There were so many times we should have won races but didn't."

His late-night accounting brought into focus what McMurray knew intuitively: the difference between being in the running and being out of the picture is a couple of bad races. If he wanted to keep up with the pack, changes had to be made.

Ironically, McMurray will tell you that the one time he did win, he probably didn't deserve to. Late in 2002, Marlin was in the hunt for the title before two hard hits in four weeks put him perched on the pit box. When team owner Chip Ganassi replaced him with an unknown kid at Talladega, a grandstand of shoulders shrugged in disbelief; McMurray had never won in NASCAR-not in 65 Busch races or even 21 tries in the Craftsman Truck Series. A week later, he stood in Victory Lane at the Lowe's Motor Speedway after just his second career start. That's a NASCAR modern-era record. It stamped him with instant validation, but it also hung expectations on a very high peg.

"I wasn't surprised and neither was anyone on the team," says Ganassi, who has made a career betting on hunches (see Montoya, Juan, and Zanardi, Alex). "Racers know when a guy is the genuine article. The first time I met Jamie, I came away with a tremendous amount of respect for him, especially for his instincts and his candor."

Good thing, because McMurray's been aiming his candor squarely at his boss ever since-in person and in the press. In June, he called out the team's engine department. In July, he wondered aloud about the abilities of his pit crew. By August, the garage was awash in whispers: McMurray was already negotiating with Joe Gibbs and Roger Penske for 2006. (Those whispers, by the way, have not quieted.) "The summer was rough on all of us," McMurray admits. "No owner wants to hear criticism, but with Chip I know I can be frank and he'll understand."

McMurray was on target with much of his bellyaching, but he didn't have to tie himself up in knots. "What I learned real quick is that by the time I had started complaining about something, Chad had already started to fix it." Fact is, missing out on The Chase was exactly what McMurray and Ganassi needed-and not just because the 11th-place racer earned a million-dollar bonus. Running out of the running let them get in position for 2005. Changing the way you build those 750-hp engines is not an overnight task. Neither is a total pit-crew reconstruction. While the 10 Chase teams were racing under mind-crushing pressure, the No. 42 squad was able to turn stress-free life in 11th place into a springboard.

"When we got to New Hampshire the week after Richmond, 2005 had already started," says crew chief Donnie Wingo, one of the most respected wrenchmen in the sport. "I told the boys we were going to finish 11th, get that bonus and show those teams in The Chase we were just as good as they were. And we ended up running better than most of them."

Actually, over the circuit's final 10 weeks McMurray had eight top-10 finishes, running better than everyone except Kurt Busch and Jimmie Johnson. Under the pre-Chase system, McMurray would have jumped all the way to sixth in the standings. The torrid pace carried into December, when Wingo and team managers Tony Glover and Andy Graves put the Havoline crew through an extreme makeover. Five of the team's seven over-the-wall crewmen were replaced with high-dollar vets plucked from the very teams they hoped to catch.

EVER SINCE he first drove a stock car in 1992, McMurray has always minded his manners on the track. His approach comes straight from the stealth masters-the Labontes, Matt Kenseth, even David Pearson: race softly, and carry a big kick. McMurray refused to make waves, or enemies, upon his arrival. Instead he quietly studied the best drivers. He memorized Tony Stewart's lines when he was just in karts. In late models, he chased local champs until he could beat them with their own moves. And during his first two years in Cup, he bugged 29-year vet Marlin to reveal all his secrets.

That deference has respect boomeranging around pit road. "I've told him several times, just keep doing what you're doing," says Mark Martin. "So many of these young guys come in here throwing themselves around and wrecking everything in their path. Not Jamie. He doesn't make noise. He just gets faster and smoother all the time."

But that deference doesn't necessarily play to the cameras. And so one of racing's great personalities lives invisibly under the noses of fans and media alike. McMurray's sense of humor and model-quality features have been obscured by the furor and flashbulbs that swirl around Gordon and the corporately labeled Young Guns-Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick, Ryan Newman, Kurt Busch, Matt Kenseth, Jimmie Johnson. On the cusp of a breakout behind the wheel, McMurray has decided to bust out in front of the cameras as well. "I guess I've always been under the radar, but that gets frustrating. Everybody in this business wants attention. When people ask for your autograph and you're busy, it can be a pain. But when you walk into a crowd at the racetrack and no one knows who you are, it's a lot worse."

McMurray has begun to go after his piece of the publicity pie. He's taken on a new personal management team that is always on the lookout for exposure. He recently taped an episode of MTV Cribs at the home he renovated himself outside Charlotte. In mid-January he made a cameo on The West Wing, giving First Lady Stockard Channing a celebratory smooch on Victory Lane. And this summer, he will try to wrest some moviegoers' eyes away from Lindsay Lohan in Herbie: Fully Loaded.

This "get to know me" movement is unfurling under the watchful eye of Wallace, one of NASCAR's legendary self-promoters. The two Missourians were raised on the same midwestern short tracks, and it's been suggested McMurray would be a logical replacement for Wallace when he hangs up his Penske South firesuit at the end of the season. Whether he does or not, McMurray will run more than a dozen Busch races in a car owned by Wallace this season, and he's been dating the 1989 Cup champ's daughter, Katie, for almost a year.

"I've told Jamie there is nothing wrong with looking out for yourself," Wallace says. "Everybody who knows him is crazy about the kid, so there's no reason he shouldn't use that. I pissed off a lot of people, and it probably cost me a lot of money and respect along the way. He's got way too level a head to make that mistake."

And as McMurray spends more and more weeknights posing for the cameras and weekdays locking horns with his boss, that level head will be the most crucial part in his car. Underneath it all, McMurray knows what raises your profile the most-Sunday afternoons. "Winning cures all. I still have just one Cup win, and every race it gets further in the rearview mirror. If I don't win, none of the other stuff matters. And if I don't win, I could be headed back to Missouri and no one would even remember who Jamie McMurray was."

If he plays his car right in 2005, no one will be able to forget.

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