NASCAR owner Chip Ganassi makes a litle history

Jamie McMurray won the Brick yard 400 today, one of the Crown Jewels of the NASCAR schedule, and gave his car owner Chip Ganassi a piece of Motor Sports history that we may not ever see again. With the victory at the Brickyard Ganassi has owned the car to win the Daytona 500, Indy 500, and Brickyard 400 in the same year. It has never been done before, and is pretty unlikely to ever happen again.

The reason for that is obvious first these are three pretty hard races to win individually and second only a handful (really less than a handful of NASCAR owners operate teams in the Indy Racing League). In fact only team owner Roger Penske has a real shot to duplicate this feat. For Jamie himself this is a pretty big feat as he wins the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 in the same NASCAR year. That is a feat that only two other NASCAR drivers have achieved (Jimmie Johnson and Dale Jarrett).

I wonder when NASCAR fans, like myself, will stop thinking of Jamie’s wins as a surprise. To be perfectly honest this win is a little shocking as Jamie has never been considered a top tier NASCAR talent, nor a guy who can win at a place like Indy. He has done very well at NASCAR’s bigger tracks lately, and his engines built by Earnhardt-Ganassi Racing has proven to be more than adequate in these horsepower kinds of races.

Even though Jamie has won two of the biggest NASCAR races of the year, he still finds himself short of a spot to make the NASCAR Chase for the Cup. He sits 151 points out of the 12th and final spot in the chase (NASCAR’s version of the playoffs). At this point, despite all the accolades that come with two big race wins it seems unlikely he will make the chase and achieve the ultimate goal of a NASCAR points title.