Jamie McMurray scored a win for JR Motorsports Saturday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway!

photo credit: Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

McMurray jumped out front on the final restart with 22 laps remaining and put the pedal to the floor to finish 0.286 seconds ahead of Kyle Busch.

‘We unloaded today and pretty much had the fastest car on the track,” McMurray said. “We just had a really good day. Pops (crew chief Tony Eury, Sr.) did a good job adjusting the car. I felt like at the beginning of the race I had the best car and it felt like we had a second or third place car in the middle. At the end, it just had tons of speed and certainly getting out in front on that last restart was critical. I really thought when we came to the green there, whoever got in front it was going to be hard to pass that guy. Fortunately we got a jump there and got ahead of Kyle (Busch). It’s the same thing every week — for the car out front, the clean air is huge.”

McMurray led three times for 48 of 195 laps.

This is McMurray’s eighth Nationwide Series win but first since Nov. 13, 2004 at Darlington Raceway. McMurray agreed to drive the #88 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports for nine races this season after the organization parted ways with driver Kelly Bires in April.

Kyle Busch led a race-high 74 laps in his quest to set a new series record for the most wins in a season. Busch is tied with Sam Ard’s 1983 record for ten race wins in a season, a feat Busch also accomplished in 2008 as well.

“Didn’t quite unfold the way we wanted it to. We came up short tonight,” Busch said. “Five laps more and I could have had him. If -- there’s always an ‘if’ in this sport I guess.”

Kevin Harvick was another strong contender for the win. He was out in front for 52 laps after taking new tires during the second caution period while the rest of the field opted not to.

“Harvick, with that little show he put on in the middle of the race, we knew tires would be big at the end,” Eury Sr. said. Harvick finished 4th.

Starting from the pole, Kasey Kahne led twice for 17 laps, but handling issues regulated him to a 19th place finish, three laps down.

“We had a really fast Great Clips Toyota and just got really loose there for a while. We kind of got that fixed and then I rubbed (Brad) Keselowski and just got too close to him and rubbed my right front,” Kahne explained his night. “Then the tire went down and that kind of ruined our race. We had a top-five car. We just didn’t finish there.”

And what about the points leader? Keselowski went home 12th.

“We probably had a fourth or fifth-place car,” Keselowski said. “We rolled the dice to win because we want to win. We know that we have a real good shot at winning the driver’s title and it’s looking really good. We’re just going for wins and doing all that we can to do that. We banked a set of tires by staying out on that last yellow. We were really prepared for another yellow to come out and we just didn’t catch it. We just didn’t catch the breaks that we needed to get a solid finish or win the race. We put ourselves in position and sometimes that’s the way it goes.”

Keselowski leads the standings by 332 points over second place driver Carl Edwards.

Edwards finished third followed by Harvick, Matt Kenseth, Joey Logano, Jason Leffler, Ryan Newman, Paul Menard and rookie Ricky Stenhouse Jr. completed the top-10.

For the (unofficial) race results, click here (nascar.com)

There were 4 caution flags for 17 laps and 9 lead changes among 5 drivers: K. Kahne 1-3; K. Busch 4-10; K. Kahne 11-24; K. Busch 25-64; J. McMurray 65-69; K. Harvick 70-121; K. Busch 122-148; J. McMurray 149-168; Brad Keselowski 169-172; J. McMurray 173-195

Next:
September 10th -- Richmond 250 at Richmond International Raceway (7 pm/ESPN2)