Throughout this year's Chase, the Roush Fenway Racing brigade has shown their strength by winning races and running up front.  Greg Biffle opened the ten-race playoff with back to back victories at New Hampshire and Dover.  Carl Edwards emerged as the biggest threat for the title, earning back to back wins at Atlanta and Texas.  Kenseth made his way into the Chase using consistency, but has consistently found bad luck throughout this Chase - despite running well.  Even though these three drivers have been competing for a championship, teammate Jamie McMurray has seemed to have found his rhythm here in the final stages of the 2008 season.

In the last five weeks, McMurray has climbed from 19th in the series standings up to 16th, thanks to three top-5s and four top-10s.  Despite that climb, McMurray is still the lowest of the five drivers in the Roush Fenway stable.  With three teammates in the Chase, the No. 26 crew has been shaken up quite a bit.

Recently, the team announced current crew chief Larry Carter would move to Yates Racing to join Paul Menard in 2009.  Taking over the pit box for McMurray next year will be former Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sebates employee Donnie Wingo.

In addition to the crew chief shake up, various over the wall crew members from the No. 26 crew have been reassigned to other crews within the organization in an attempt to improve performance.

Despite all of these changes, McMurray has shown he can get the job down behind the wheel.  Of all the Roush Fenway cars, McMurray's was clearly the best at Dover just a few weeks ago.  After leading for a number of laps, a poor pit stop mired the No. 26 Ford Fusion in traffic.  Caught up in another car's mess, McMurray was forced to take home a 36th-place finish.

"It's tough because that has certainly hurt our pit stops, and at Dover it," McMurray said of his team's situation.  "I don't know that it'll cost you the win, but it cost us another really good run because we got back in traffic."

Last week at Phoenix, McMurray led twice for a total of twenty-six laps.  However a slow pit stop early in the going lost the No. 26 two spots on the track.  Yet, driver and crew were able to overcome their misstep early on and come home with a third-place finish.

"We had bad pit stops at the beginning, but the last two were really good," McMurray added. "I beat cars out of the pits.  Those guys are certainly more than capable of doing it.  It's just being a little more consistent, but they did a good job at the end."

While it hasn't made things easy, McMurray explained he understood the team's situation and was willing to be a team player.  Hopes are next season he finds himself on the other side of the coin.

"The way they explained that to me is that if next season, if I'm in the Chase and somebody is not on at Roush that they would let me have - if I needed somebody off that team, they would give it to me.  It was just based on the guys that are in the Chase and the guys that aren't.

"I guess it's because I got the short straw, too, and they've told me that part of this process was trying guys out for next year to get them ready," he went on to say.  "It's just really tough for the two tire changers that they've brought over.  They've never worked with any of these guys, and some of these pit crews have been together for years.  I know the 48 team has been together for a long time.  And you can't expect somebody just to jump in and in a few races do better than those teams that have been around for a long time."

Next season is going to be one of McMurray?s most important years, and it seems this late season push shows he is well aware of his situation.  Starting with the 2010 season, teams will only be allowed to field four cars.  This means Roush Fenway Racing will have to cut one of its teams and one of its drivers.  The lowest man on the totem pole, McMurray has been proving over the last few weeks that he can still get the job done.

"No one has ever acknowledged to me, hey, this is what the game plan is or if it's the lowest car in points," McMurray pointed out. "No one has ever said that, and I've never asked.  I don't know how that's going to work.  So I don't know that there's anything to fight for.  Maybe that's already set in stone.  I don't know that."

All McMurray can do is to carry this momentum on to Homestead this weekend and hope to break through with the victory.  One of Roush Fenway Racing's best tracks, McMurray has as good a shot as any to be a Chase spoiler come Sunday.  As for next season, McMurray will literally be racing for his job.