During the last two seasons, Jamie McMurray raced his way into the NASCAR Chase for the Sprint Cup field for the first times in his career.
He's also been eliminated during the first round both seasons, so the goal for 2017 is simple _ stay in the hunt until the Championship 4 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
That, of course, is every driver's goal in what is now called the Monster Energy Cup Series, but it's how McMurray will define success and progress for his Chip Ganassi Racing team.
"Ultimately, your success is based on winning races and contending for the championship when you get to Homestead," McMurray said in a phone interview with The Star. "Everybody's goal is to make the (playoffs), but on top of making the (playoffs) it's about getting that chance at Homestead to be one of those guys that gets to race for the championship."
That doesn't mean he'll feel like a failure if he doesn't make the final four, but McMurray still has sky-high ambitions entering his 15th full-time Cup season.
"It's about competing to win and giving yourself a chance to win every single week," McMurray said.
The latter also has been a challenge lately for McMurray, a Joplin, Mo., native who will turn 41 in early June.
He hasn't won a regular-season race since Oct. 20, 2013, when he claimed the checkered flag during the fall race at Talladega Superspeedway.
In fact, that stands as McMurray's only regular-season win since 2010 _ when he won the Daytona 500, the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and finished first at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
"I won the All-Star race (in 2014)," said McMurray, who will serve as a guest analyst for the NASCAR Xfinity Series race March 11 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "When I think about the last win, that's what I think about. ... (Winning) is what it's all about. That's what you define success on is being able to get to victory lane."
From that standpoint, it feels like a racing lifetime since he performed a meaningful burnout.
"Everything seems like a long time ago," McMurray said. "I feel like time flies by, whether it's at racing or with your family. It seems like everything goes by faster than you expect it to."
But he also feels like he's close to another win.
"Our team and our organization, when we ended last year, we certainly had cars that were capable of winning races," McMurray said. "(Chip Ganassi teammate Kyle Larson) did win at Michigan and had a great car at Homestead. I think we finished fifth at Homestead."
Despite rule changes entering the new season, McMurray is confident he and his team can capitalize on the momentum built toward the end of last season.
"What we look at it as a team are trends," said McMurray, who has yet to consider retirement. "Basically, if you can plot out your practices, your qualifying results and your race results, there's always trends from the first race to the last. It's typically never flat. It almost always trends up or down and, for us last year, it trended up all year long. That's where we plan to pick up in 2017."
It may not be apparent when the green flag drops Feb. 26 for the 59th running of the season-opening Daytona 500 _ "The Super Bowl of Stock Car Racing" _ because it's a restrictor-plate race.
Those cars are only used at Daytona and Talladega, but McMurray doesn't think it will take long to figure out if he's a legitimate contender in 2017.
"Historically, when you run the first five races of your season, you kind of know where you stack up and where you're going to be at," he said. "Daytona is not a good barometer, because it's such a unique track and we only race those cars four times a year. When we get to Atlanta and you see the first practice and qualifying for that race, that's when you start to look at where you stack up."
