Even as friends drift away from NASCAR, Jamie McMurray has no plans to retire

Even though the number of his contemporaries in the sport continues to shrink, don’t expect Jamie McMurray to give up racing in the near future if he has anything to say about it.

A little less than halfway through the 2018 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series season, Jamie McMurray will turn 42 years old. For most of us, that’s nowhere near retirement age, and it wasn’t always in stock car racing either.

But for a number of reasons, there’s a youth movement underway in NASCAR, and the number of 40-plus drivers who can win races or make the playoffs is dwindling. Besides McMurray, there’s Jimmie Johnson and Kevin Harvick, both 42, and 40-year-old Ryan Newman. That’s about it.

It’s not the drivers who are still in the garage, though, but the ones who have left the Cup Series recently that weigh the most on McMurray’s mind. As he told Racer this week, he can’t help but think of former Roush teammates Greg Biffle and Matt Kenseth and how both of them were shuffled out of NASCAR before they were ready to go.

"“Sad is not the word, but it’s kind of sad. I ran with Matt [Kenseth] on Monday, and we’re running through the woods and just kind of talking, and it’s sad that Matt’s not going to be there [this] year. Dale [Earnhardt] Jr. doesn’t quite hit home for me as much because I wasn’t as close to him, but Biffle was someone that back in the days at Roush, Matt and Greg and I were all really tight, like our families, everybody.“And I still see Greg at school two or three days a week when we pick our kids up. So, it’s sad, yeah. You see a group of guys that you raced and they are slowing, kind of retiring.”"

Still, McMurray mentioned his buddies because he’s determined not to join them in the near future. He pointed to his increased emphasis on physical fitness — something that Johnson has also credited for his longevity — as a sign that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to continue.

The difference is that Johnson is a seven-time champion, a bona fide all-time great. McMurray has accomplished a lot, including a feat that only two others have accomplished by winning both the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 500 in the same year. The fact remains that he has as many Cup Series race wins as Johnson has titles (none of them coming in the last four seasons), and thus is that much less likely to be able to go out on his own terms.

McMurray also said the magic words to Racer: that he only plans to race as long as he’s competitive. He’s remarkably consistent, something of a top-10 machine, so that fits many people’s definition of the term. He also just made the playoffs, so it’s hard to call him a non-factor.

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Yet one wonders if he’ll need to start returning to Victory Lane to keep the youth movement away from his Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. Next time he’s jogging with Kenseth, Matt might remind him that even a win in 2017 wasn’t enough for anyone to offer him a seat for this season.

Or maybe he’ll shrug it all off and just keep on racing. That seems like a plan that fits Jamie Mac to a tee.