There are exactly three races during the NASCAR and IndyCar schedules combined that are considered the elite three of the season: the Daytona 500 (NASCAR), Indianapolis 500 (IndyCar) and Brickyard 400 (NASCAR). The Big Three are the most prestigious of all on the racing circuit, and until late July no team owner had ever had drivers win all three in one year.

Chip Ganassi changed all that when Jamie McMurray won the Brickyard 400 in Indianapolis on July 25. Ganassi’s racing teams – Target Chip Ganassi Racing in IndyCar and Earnhardt Ganassi Racing in NASCAR – helped him earn the triple crown of racing over the weekend, cementing his name into the history books as Viagra Professional the first team owner to do so.

Ganassi’s road to the Big Three began back in February, when Jamie McMurray kicked off NASCAR season with a Feb. 14 win at the Daytona 500. McMurray bested perennial Daytona threats like Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Jimmie Johnson to claim the win at Daytona, setting up the Ganassi team as a strong threat to the season.

While Earnhardt Ganassi drivers McMurray and Juan Pablo Montoya continued dominating the NASCAR scene throughout the spring and into the summer, Ganassi’s IndyCar team blasted into high gear with its own powerful duo of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti. Ganassi’s next big win came during Memorial Day weekend in May with the sacred Indianapolis 500, when Franchitti posted a victory in the Greatest Spectacle in Racing and won the Indy race for the second time in his career.

After Franchitti maneuvered his vehicle to Victory Lane at the Indy 500, Chip Ganassi became the first team owner to ever win the country’s two 500-mile races during the same year. The excitement, however, wasn’t quite over for the owner with the ‘target’ on his back.

On July 25, 2010, Ganassi became the most enviable owner in racing history when McMurray pulled out a win at the Brickyard 400. The trifecta was complete with McMurray’s win at Indianapolis – his first win since Daytona – and was cause for celebration in the Target Chip Ganassi Racing pits.

What’s more remarkable for the Ganassi team is the fact that Jamie McMurray was almost – almost – a has-been after last season. Ganassi signed him to a deal at the end of 2009 to replace Martin Truex, Jr., and now he’s glad he did. After Sunday’s Brickyard race, McMurray told ESPN, “I’ll tell you something that Chip said to me right before I got in the car. He said, ‘Let’s go out and do this thing.’ I said, ‘I’ll give you everything I’ve got.’ He said, ‘I know. That’s why I hired you. I believe in you.’…That’s what drives me, having somebody behind you.”

The strong partnership between Chip Ganassi and his drivers has been a big factor in his teams’ successes, and Ganassi wins are also part of what drives the sales of NASCAR tickets to races every year.

Now that Chip Ganassi has achieved the formerly unattainable, is it plausible to think another team owner can soon follow this path? Kevin Harvick, for one, doesn’t think so.
Reflecting on the Big Three races and their significance to the sport, Harvick told ESPN, “To win all those in one year is remarkable. It’ll probably never happen again.”

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