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McMurray avoids misfortune to score season-high third at Texas

Jamie McMurray was in desperate need of a good run at Texas Motor Speedway.

Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Camaro Cessna

Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Camaro Cessna

John Harrelson / NKP / Motorsport Images

Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Camaro First Data
Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Camaro Cessna
Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, McDonald's / Cessna Chevrolet Camaro
Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, Chevrolet Camaro Cessna
Jamie McMurray, Chip Ganassi Racing, McDonald's / Cessna Chevrolet Camaro

After finishing 16th in the Daytona 500, McMurray finished inside the top 20 just once more in the next five races with a 17th at Fontana. But that all changed this weekend at Texas where McMurray placed third after running as high as second.

“Yeah, it was basically just a really good day for us from the start of the race," he said. "The car was pretty good, especially on the long runs.  And then fortunate to miss a lot of the wrecks that happened and survived and then had good pit stops.  So, all around just a pretty solid day for our team.”

McMurray's Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Kyle Larson suffered a right front tire puncture that ended his race during the second stage, but the veteran driver was able to avoid similar misfortune as he charged towards the front. It was the first time this season where the No. 1 team was able to put a complete race together.

“We ran okay at (Las) Vegas and Phoenix and blew a right-front at Vegas and then I had to pit with like 10 laps to go or eight laps to go at Phoenix and ended up losing a couple of laps because of another tire issue. Then had to pit again at Martinsville because of a left-rear tire rub with like 10 laps to go.  We have run okay. We certainly haven’t run as well as we did today.

"But, we have run okay this year, but today certainly was our best performance. We had some different stuff in our car. You try to learn in the off season and some of the stuff that we tried at the beginning of the year didn’t work out. So, we went back to similar to what we had last year and we ran really well on the 1.5 miles and our performance was way better today than it has been all year long. So, hopefully we can continue to work with that set-up and those parts and perform each week.”

McMurray leaves Texas 23rd in the championship standings.

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