Report: Jamie McMurray will not return to Chip Ganassi Racing in 2019, Kurt Busch in?
By Nick Tylwalk
This could be the last Brickyard 400 for Jamie McMurray, who apparently is out as driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet at the end of this season.
Kyle Larson will have a new teammate at Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2019 NASCAR season, according to a report from the AP that suggests that Jamie McMurray is approaching the end of his time as full-time driver of the No. 1 Chevrolet.
The AP’s source was the most reliable one possible: team owner Chip Ganassi himself.
Ganassi says his offer to McMurray involved running the Daytona 500 in a third CGR car and then taking on a front office role with the team like the one Dario Franchitti is in on the open-wheel side.
"I love Jamie McMurray and I want him on my team. In a Dario role, though."
What the report doesn’t confirm is whether or not Kurt Busch is on his way in as the new driver for the No. 1 car. Busch has stated that he has two contract offers for the 2019 NASCAR season,, without mentioning specifically which two teams made those offers.
Both McMurray and Busch are among the elder statesmen of the current Cup Series garage, though Busch is two years younger. More importantly, he’s found more recent success than McMurray, locked in for this year’s playoffs with a win at Bristol and riding a seven-race win streak into Indianapolis, three more than McMurray has on the season.
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In other words, he figures to be a step up in terms of battling for wins, something that has been tougher for Chip Ganassi Racing in 2018 as it has struggled a bit adjusting to the new Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. In any case, a driver lineup of Larson and Busch for 2019 would be a formidable one for a two-car team, though it would be bittersweet to see the personable McMurray leave on anything but his own terms.