Jamie McMurray wins Brickyard 400 NASCAR race at Indianapolis

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Jamie McMurray held off Kevin Harvick and Greg Biffle to win the NASCAR Brickyard 400 on Sunday after McMurray teammate and pole-sitter Juan Pablo Montoya suffered another late-in-the-race heartbreak at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

McMurray’s victory gave his team co-owner, Chip Ganassi, an unprecedented motor-sports trifecta: McMurray also won the Daytona 500 in February, and Dario Franchitti of Ganassi’s IndyCar team won this year’s Indianapolis 500 in May.

Montoya, himself a former Indy 500 winner before he moved to NASCAR, led 86 laps in the 160-lap race and appeared poised to avenge his disappointment of last year, when he also dominated but finished 11th after a late-race speeding penalty on the pit road.

But with Montoya leading with 23 laps left this year, the caution period came out, and Montoya’s crew elected to put four tires on his car. McMurray and several other cars took only two tires and restarted ahead of Montoya.

Once the green flag fell again, Montoya simply faded in the heavy traffic, and then he smacked the wall and hit Dale Earnhardt Jr. Montoya finished 32nd, and Earnhardt was 27th.

In a big surprise, Jimmie Johnson finished 22nd after starting second. Johnson, the reigning Sprint Cup Series champion who started second Sunday, had won the Brickyard 400 three times, including the last two.The race got off to a rocky start when a spinning Kyle Busch triggered a multi-car crash on the second turn of the first lap. Sam Hornish Jr. and David Reutimann also were among the drivers involved.

-- Jim Peltz in Indianapolis