Jamie McMurray, driver of the No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion, has climbed to 10th in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup standings following three consecutive top-10 finishes. Saturday night’s race will be the third with the new Car of Tomorrow; McMurray finished ninth in both of the previous two (at Bristol and Martinsville).

JAMIE McMURRAY – No. 26 Crown Royal Ford Fusion – HAS YOUR NEW FITNESS PROGRAM MADE YOU A BETTER RACE-CAR DRIVER? “That’s hard to say. Having good cars and good communication with our team has probably made the biggest difference. I don’t think that’s hurt, trying to get on a good fitness program, and eating well. I think anyone who’s ever been on a good diet and was eating properly, when you go back and eat something bad, you notice that you don’t feel as good, so I think that good eating can’t hurt you.”

WHAT KIND OF PROGRAM ARE YOU ON? “I hired, actually, Ricky Carmichael’s trainer, just to try to get in better shape. Everyone knows that motorcross guys are in as good of shape as any athlete. I mean, anyone who can hang onto a dirt bike for 20 laps in one of these Supercross races is in really good shape. So, I looked at trying to find a trainer, and Todd Hayes from Oakley, Ricky Carmichael’s an Oakley guy, he said, ‘I’ve got, like, the best there is. He hired this guy 10 years ago. You need to talk with him.’ So, the guy only works with Nicky Hayden and Ricky Carmichael, and I think he works with one of Hayden’s brothers. His name is Aldon Baker. So, I called him. One of the reasons I really like him is because I’m not really big on doing all of these protein shakes and these fancy bars they only eat, his only thing was about, not everything organic, but eating just good quality foods – lots of granolas and lean meats. So, I just got on this program with him, and I don’t know that it’s changed my life, but I certainly feel better every day when I wake up. I wake up and I do 10 minutes of stretching first thing in the morning, I don’t want to do it, but you wake up and just do it, and that’s part of my routine every day.”

WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO? “It just depends. He sends me a workout program every Sunday that has both the cardio program and a weightlifting program. There’s not a lot of weights. I didn’t start working out to try to be muscular. I did it so that I would feel good at the end of a race or be able to recover quicker after a race. I do a little bit of weights, but a lot of cardio. I have a bike, I have a rowing machine, I have an elliptical machine and then I run outside, so lots of cardio.”

CAN YOU SEE A DIFFERENCE? “You know what? I don’t see a difference, but when I see people who haven’t seen me in a month or so, they’re always, like, ‘Wow, you look so much leaner.’ I don’t see a big difference. I don’t really pay attention, I just do the program every day. I like working out. I generally like the waking up at 6:30 or 7 in the morning and working out. It’s a great way to start your day.”

WHAT CONVINCED YOU TO DO THIS? “Last year we struggled so bad. I bought shock dyno and I thought that learning about shocks it would make me a faster racer, you know, to to know than the next guy maybe it would help me make adjustments or to be able to talk lingo with the shock guy or crew chiefs or engineers, and I learned a lot about shocks but it didn’t seem to help my performance any. So I sat down, I had a terrible year last year, and I was, like, what could I do that would make me better? The only thing that I was in control of was my well-being, and I was just making myself stronger physically and mentally. And so I just decided this year I was going to do everything I could just to help prepare my body mentally and physically for the racing season.”

DO YOU SEE A SPORTS PSYCHOLOGIST? “I haven’t seen a sports psychologist; I’ve been to a school – it doesn’t teach you anything you don’t already know. It teaches you to always think positive. I think the best example is if you ever play golf and you walk up to the golf ball, and you say, ‘Don’t slice it. Don’t hit in the water. Don’t hit it in the water,’ you’ll hit it right in the water. Everybody does it. You just can’t help it. Typically, if you tell yourself don’t do something, don’t do something, you’ll probably do it. So it just kind of teaches you how to think correctly. Everyone knows how to do it, you just have to sometimes be refreshed. For me, it’s just given me a new life, not just in racing but everything that happens. If I’m not in control of things, I don’t let it bother me anymore.”

WHAT’S THE NAME OF THE SCHOOL? “The school is called Prime Performance now. It’s a two-day school, and you’ve got homework that you do. You do it every night for a while, and I still do it after each race. You analyze yourself and figure out what you could’ve – when you got out of the car did you give 100 percent? Were there times in the race that you should’ve done this different? Did you make the right decisions? Did you race smart enough? There’s a lot of questions after a race – what could I have done better? If you go home and never think about it, you’re never going to get better. We’d go home every weekend after the race and sit down and actually I type everything down on my computer so I can read it – I’m big on visual, I have to see things in order for them to make sense to me – so I’d go home, type out all my thoughts and I’d look at it, and every time I get in the car I remember what I should’ve done better.”

CAN YOU TELL THAT THAT’S MAKING A DIFFERENCE? “I think Texas was a good example for me last weekend. When you get a lap down, even when you have a good car, it beats you up. You’re like, ‘Here we were halfway through the race, three-quarters of the way through the race and we’re already down a lap,’ you know we lost a lap and got back on the lead lap and finished fifth, and I felt so good after the race because I thought, ‘Man, I never gave up.’ I don’t think that guys give up, you don’t go, ‘I’m just going to give up,’ but sometimes you lose all your steam or your pizzazz. For me, there’s a lot of things that you’re not in control of, and you just have to go out and give 100 percent every lap. Sometimes you get more than you think.”

WHAT ELSE HAS CHANGED FOR YOU THIS YEAR TO HELP THIS TEAM’S PERFORMANCE? “I think Larry Carter is a huge, huge part of why we’re running so well. He doesn’t ever get excited when things don’t go well. He’s serious, but at the same time he can ease the tension. [Yesterday] is an example. We were terrible, and I was getting frustrated, because you want to do well. He has a great way of just calming everybody down. He doesn’t say, ‘Calm down,’ he just has his tone of voice and his demeanor. It’s a great climate to be around. And Derek Stametz, the engineer, has done a great job and the car chief, Todd Ziegler, has come over from Mark Martin’s car, the tire guy, everybody. It’s just a really good team. It’s definitely the best team I’ve ever been with. I feel just great about all these guys.”

ARE THERE A LOT OF NEW GUYS THIS YEAR? “A lot of new guys. Actually, there’s four or five guys between the race track and the shop that’s the same form last year. Once we got Larry hired, he found the guys that he felt good working with, and those guys, they think the world of him, and so do I. So when he asks you to do something, you don’t question it, you just do it and you move on. Being a crew chief, you have to be a great leader, and those guys have to respect you and want to get in [there for you]. And those guys are all willing to do that for Larry.”

DO YOU HAVE NEW CARS THIS YEAR? “Every car is brand new. We have one car that we’ve brought as a back-up three or four times, we really don’t have any intentions of racing it. We built all brand-new chassis and all brand-new bodies – pretty much copied all of Matt’s cars. A couple of the chassis are a little bit different, but we have two or three cars that are just like Matt’s. And the Cars of Tomorrow, they’re all identical. So, all brand-new stuff.”

HOW ARE THEY DIFFERENT FROM LAST YEAR? “The aero package is a little bit different. The way we’re hanging the bodies. And the chassis are just a little bit different. If you only have eight pieces of a 10-piece puzzle, you don’t have a puzzle, and last year we would have a lot pieces but we never had them all together. So this year we just got those other two pieces.”

HOW’S YOUR CONFIDENCE RIGHT NOW? “Part of the schooling that I went to was to help me. When things are good, it’s easy. Anybody could be happy when you’re fast, but when you’re not fast you’ve got to learn to dig deep, and have the right mental thoughts. Right now I feel great. And I feel really good about my team. When you have great pit stops every week and you’re unloading and your cars are fast or even though your cars aren’t and you’re able to make them fast in an hour, it makes you feel really good. So, a lot of confidence in your ability, but I have a lot of confidence in my team. And that means just as much as anything.”

HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO WINNING? “I feel like there’s been two or three races this year that you just think the right adjustment that you could be in Victory Lane. From where we were last year to being seven races into this year and running as well as we do every week, I think it would be hard to say we should’ve won a race by now because it’s a brand-new team. But we’re a lot further along than I thought we would be and I think Jack or Max Jones or anybody expected of our team right now. We thought it would take a little time to get going, and we just all hit it off right away.”