#42-Jamie McMurray clinched Raybestos Rookie of the Year honors at Homestead. He finished ninth in the race, his 13th top-10 of the season. McMurray unofficially took the title by 37 points (320.25-283.25) over Greg Biffle and was one of three Raybestos Rookies to finish on the lead lap: #74-Tony Raines (13th) and #14-Larry Foyt (16th) were the others. A Raybestos Rookie has now finished in the top-10 in all five races at Homestead. Tony Stewart, first (1999); Dave Blaney, ninth (2000); Casey Atwood, third, Kevin Harvick, seventh, and Jason Leffler, 10th (2001); and Ryan Newman sixth and Jimmie Johnson, eighth (2002). McMurray took Raybestos Rookie of the Race honors 21 times including 12 of the last 13 races. No other Raybestos Rookie grabbed the honor more than nine times. He also finished the season with more top-fives (five) and more top-10 finishes (12) than any other first year driver. His 13th place finish in Winston Cup points was best among all first-year drivers. Tony Raines, #74 Speed Racer Chevy: (Raines finishes the season with four consecutive top-20 finishes.) “This is a solid way to end the season by posting our second best finish of the season. We came on strong in the last six to eight races so that gives this team a lot of momentum heading into the off-season. We’ve been through a lot as a team since Daytona but we’ve learned a great deal and achieved the majority of the goals that we set for ourselves when we started the season. I give a lot of credit to (crew chief, Larry) Carter because his leadership was tremendous the entire year. There are plenty of times when we could have gotten down on ourselves and it would have been easy to give up because no one had any expectations for us to succeed. But that is not what this team or organization is about. We hung in there and I think we surprised a lot of people and gained the respect of a lot as well. Our car wasn’t handling that great today. The first twenty to twenty five laps, I was thinking we were in pretty good shape but it went away pretty quick and got tight especially entering the corners. Just like we have all year, we just continued hammering away at it and in the end we got some good breaks and came out with a solid top-15 finish.” Note: Larry Foyt started a career best 12th at Homestead and backed that up with a 16th place finish in the race, his career best in 20 Winston Cup starts. His previous best finish was a 28th place effort, which came most recently last week at Rockingham. Larry Foyt, #14 Harrah’s Dodge: “What a way to end the year. Ray Evernham and Sammy Johns really helped out this weekend and that was a huge boost. Qualifying was great and the race was so much fun. It was so much fun being able to race guys and be competitive. We finished on the lead lap for the first time this year without having to be the ‘lucky dog.’ My car was really tight at the start of the race but from about halfway to the end the car was great. It loved clean air and the top of the racetrack. But, it seems the guys we were racing against knew that and would block my line. I’m just happy to have a good finish. This team really deserves it. They’ve been behind me all year and they never gave up.” Casey Mears, #41 Target Dodge: “The car was not great to start with but we were working on it and thought we were getting it better. There was a piece of debris that went though the grill and into the radiator. The guys did an unbelievable job changing the radiator in three laps. I had some bad luck but rookie years can be like that and I am looking forward to 2004.”(Camp and Assoc PR)(11-16-2003)
