NASCAR: Jamie McMurray wins another controversial race at Talladega

Jamie McMurray snapped an 86 race winless drought, but, his victory was overshadowed by Talladega Speedway’s usual chaos.

This time the famous, “big one,” a crash involving multiple cars bunched up due to the nature of restrictor plate racing on the 2.66 mile high banked oval, was also overshadowed by Ryan Newman’s frightening crash with five laps to go.

At a driver’s meeting, on Sunday, NASCAR officials stated firmly that bump drafting, which is actually pushing the car in front, would be penalized if done in the turns.

The race started out in unusual fashion with single-file racing for most of the time. Tony Stewart radioed he was bored. Kevin Harvick’s crew offered, jokingly to put an Ipod in his water bottle holder.

Consequently, there wasn’t much excitement before the race came down to three laps to go. Ryan Newman’s crash caused a 12 minute 30 second red flag. When racing resumed the “big one” happened on the green-white-checkered finish.

Although Newman was uninjured he rattled off a blistering complaint about the racing rules and the fact that the 3500 pound cars still can get airborne.

Tony Stewart, his team owner, got into Newman causing him to hit Marcos Ambrose’s car then to get airborne landing on the hood of Kevin Harvick’s car upside down. Then he hit the outside wall, came down the track and was flipped on its’ nose, spinning until his car landed on its roof.

Newman said bitterly, “we complained about cars getting airborne and ironically I'm the guy who gets upside down.”

Talking about the early part of the race, McMurray said, “I couldn’t believe the single-file that we had. When I was leading that deal at the end I knew that there would be an inside row that would come up and challenge us, so it was very exciting for me there.

“I saw the guys wreck behind me and I wasn’t sure what the rules were, the 9 (Kasey Kahne) went to the outside, but I just moved up and tried to block him.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve won and I want to assure every fan out there that I appreciate this as much as anybody, so thanks to all my fans who have stuck with me.” This was the first win for Ford in 31 races, since Matt Kenseth won in California.

Kahne said of the new rules, “I think when all these cars are bunched up and things, it's just one little move by one car, and the other guy moves the other way to block or just to go in another gap and that closes, then you have those wrecks. That's just this type of racing. And I think everybody understands that.”

Rookie Joey Logano finished third. Jimmie Johnson finished sixth as a result of the crashes at the end, after running 30th most of the race.  He now has a commanding 184-point lead over Mark Martin and 192-points over Jeff Gordon.

“I hate to see so many tore up cars and the big wreck that took place, but for us what really made the difference, obviously , was that we were conservative all day long,” said Johnson.