Jammie McMurry lands McDonald’s for a sponsor to help fill the sponsorship void, the possibility of racing nearly half the season without sponsorship was no laughing matter to McMurray and his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team.

With McDonald’s coming on board for about a third of the Sprint Cup season, there are only a handful of races left for Earnhardt Ganassi to fill. The possibility of racing nearly half the season without sponsorship was no laughing matter to McMurray and his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team.

“I was worried,” McMurray said Friday at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “We didn’t have a full-time sponsor, a full year sold. But after winning the 500, team manager Tony Glover leaned over and looked at me in victory lane and he said he thought we were pretty safe and we could run the whole season.

  

“I felt pretty good at that point. It takes a lot of money to run a race team. I was definitely concerned with what was going to happen, although I will say they felt comfortable if the McDonald’s sponsorship wasn’t here, they had enough one-race or two-race things to run the entire season.”

Bass Pro Shops was only sponsoring the team for half the season, the team needed sponsorship to fill out the rest of the year. Winning the daytona 500 sure didn’t hurt in attracting McDonald’s.

“These sponsorship deals don’t just come off of a race,” McMurray said. “It takes a long time to not only sell the sponsor, but for the sponsor to go back and sell it to the board.

“It’s not something that winning the Daytona 500 did all of a sudden to bring the next sponsorship to our team. They’ve been working very hard on that to get sponsorship sold, although it certainly doesn’t hurt to win.”

Earnhardt Ganassi was in negotiations with McDonald’s well before the Daytona 500.

“We’ve been working with them for a long time,” EGR President Steve Lauletta said. “Obviously it was great to send them a note from victory
lane in Daytona saying, ‘How great is this?’

“It doesn’t hurt to win a race like that to push things along, but we were pretty well down the road before that.”

“It’s just a huge next step in terms of validation of what we’re doing on the track and off the track to have a brand like McDonald’s come on board to join Target and Bass Pro,” Lauletta said. “It says to everybody in our shop and hopefully people watching the sport that we’re a team on the move.”

Speed TV contributed to this report

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The adrenaline rush of the final two laps, the second attempt at a green-white-checkered-flag finish under rules implemented by NASCAR before Thursday’s Gatorade Duels, all but erased the frustration of almost 2½ hours of stoppages as track workers at Daytona International Speedway repaired potholes in the asphalt between Turns 1 and 2.

You couldn’t have asked for a more story book finish. When other teams wrote him off and even Jammie wasn’t sure where he would be for the 2010 season, owner Chip Ganassi  gave McMurry the chance to come back and drive for Earnhardt Ganassi racing.

“Oh, my God!” McMurray screamed after taking the checkered flag. “I can’t freaking believe it right now. Thank you so much. I can’t believe we just won the Daytona 500.”

Later,  in Victory Lane, McMurray fought back tears. Though he won one race last season at Roush Fenway Racing, he struggled in his final year there and was the odd man out from his team’s NASCAR-mandated reduction from five teams to four.

“It’s a dream — it really is,” he said. “To be where I was last year, and for Johnny Morris owner of sponsor Bass Pro Shops, Chip and co-owner Felix Sabates to take a chance on me and let me come back what a way to pay them back.”

With the new areo package and restrictor plate size, cars were not able to come up through the field like years past. There wasn’t a lot of drivers  sitting out back waiting to avoid the big wreck.

The Roush Fenway Ford Fusions look to be strong all night. Greg Biffle in the #16 3M car finished third, Matt Kenseth in the #17 Crown Royal car finished 8th and soon to be father Carl Edwards finished a respectable 9th place.

Clint Bowyer, who led 37 laps, finished fourth, followed by David Reutimann. Martin Truex Jr. and Kevin Harvick the 2009 Daytona 500 winner.

Under the new NASCAR rules the race leader must take the white flag and start the final lap under green before the race can end, unless three attempts at a green-white-checkered-flag finish are exhausted.

The field failed to make it to the white flag under green on a restart on Lap 203, because NASCAR called a caution for a wreck off Turn 2 involving Kasey Kahne, Tony Stewart, Robert Richardson and Jeff Gordon. By then, McMurray had rocketed to second position behind Harvick and restarted next to Harvick on Lap 207.

The push from Biffle gave McMurry the lead he need to win the race.

Coming into turn three on the last lap  McMurry look in his mirror only to see the #88 Chevy National Guard car driven by Dale Earnhardt Jr, McMurray said, “No!” but there wasn’t enough time for Jr to make a move for the win.

Nascar .com contributed to this report.

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