Jamie McMurray is still sore from a practice accident Friday at Dover International Speedway and isn’t happy about the conditions that helped create the pain.
The soreness, in his ribs, is a result of McMurray running through oil put down on the track by a mechanical failure on Danica Patrick‘s car. McMurray’s No. 1 Chevrolet skidded into the outside wall on the frontstretch.
The outside wall on the frontstretch at Dover lacks SAFER barrier despite the track adding 479 feet of the Steel and Foam Energy Reduction barriers for this race weekend. Dover added 401 feet along an inside wall in Turn 3 and added 78 feet to the existing backstretch wall.
“That’s unacceptable in this day and time that we have a straightaway — especially at a track like Dover on the outside where we’ve seen just crazy big hits,” McMurray told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Saturday. “I have no idea why they don’t have that. I assume that we’ll have that by the fall. But yeah, it’s unacceptable that they don’t have that they don’t have that right now.”
McMurray was cleared by the track’s medical center but left with a sore elbow. While his elbow is still sore, McMurray said his ribs “hurt really bad” more than 24 hours after the wreck that also included Tony Stewart. Patrick also voiced her concerns about the lack of SAFER.
“Obviously, when you get in the seat, the part of the seat that pushes on your ribs is the part you still feel right now,” said McMurray, who starts 24th Sunday. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver said competing in the AAA 400 Drive for Autism “will be a challenge.”
“My neck and my ribs are really sore right now and this is one of those tracks where you have the highest loads of anywhere.”
To keep McMurray as comfortable as possible during the 400-mile race, his team has added six inches of foam to the left side of his seat.
