That his team owner, at least for one more month, is suing NASCAR on antitrust and monopoly violations did nothing to take speed away from Michael McDowell and the Front Row Motorsports No. 34 on Saturday in time trials for the Cup Series race at Talladega.
That’s five superspeedway poles in a row and a track where he was leading late in the spring before getting crashed from the lead.
“After the spring race, I played it in my head a lot, just because you’re always trying to learn and study and figure out, ‘Okay, what went right and what went wrong (and) how would you process it different; How would you make the moves different?’
“It’s more analytical than just, ‘oh, don’t make the last block.’ It’s how do you do all the things you need to do and still win the race. And then you kind of just lock in and get focused and you move on. You move on pretty quickly in our sport.”
McDowell said he has watched replays of the end of the spring race several times but still hasn’t watched the point where he got crashed.
“Every time I just won’t even let it get to the wreck. I stop it. I just scroll up or scroll left or right. I don’t know what you call it, but it’s because I don’t want to see it,” McDowell said. “The reason I don’t want to see it is it’s hard. That was my shot to make the playoffs. That was our shot to get a win and it slipped out of our hands, but the reason I don’t want to watch it and the reason why I don’t reflect on it is because I’m staying in this moment. Tomorrow is a new day, a new opportunity and we’ll have a shot of winning the race.”
While McDowell tries to win a race, just as a point of pride, looking for his third win in four years with the underfunded underdogs, there are 12 teams racing for their championship lives on Sunday.
This is the second race of the three-race Round of 12 and Ross Chastain winning at Kansas left no one locked in ahead of the most chaotic races of the race on Sunday and then next weekend at the newly reconfigured Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval.
Obviously, Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe are facing must-win scenarios over the next two weekends but this is also a race where both drivers are piloting the preferred manufacturer at this track and with teammates to help keep them to the front.
“Yes, Ford Performance has had speed at these types of tracks but we have a lot of work to do from a performance and execution standpoint so I’m not taking this as any kind of given tomorrow either,” Cindric said.
Throughout the playoffs, all three eliminated Stewart-Haas Racing teams have offered support to Briscoe so they could theoretically commit to pushing him all race but this is also an opportunity for them to win for their own teams too, right?’
“I expect them to do the things that are the best for them and their teams at the end of the race,” Briscoe said. “But I do expect there to be opportunities like near the stage breaks for us to get points and to expect help to get them too.
“And really, if our teammates are running in the top-10 at the stage breaks, that’s taking points away from those we’re racing too. That matters too. But we haven’t had those discussions yet. That will be in the morning for our team and manufacturer meetings.”
William Byron is the safest driver, but an early crash could prove to be his undoing on Sunday or maybe it wouldn’t.
“My philosophy is that these cars are very durable,” Byron said. “I was involved in four crashes at Daytona and it took four of them to wipe me out. If you can get in one crash, and escape it, you can still escape it and have a chance at a win or at least a top five.
“There’s a luck element for sure for this race, but I also think you’re better off the closer to the front you are and that’s where I want to be.”
Ryan Blaney won this race last year and views it as an opportunity race.
“We’ve come to look forward to these events,” Blaney said. “I know some people come out and say, ‘We don’t look forward to these events.’ That’s not a good mindset to have, so I think how do we maximize the weekend, whether it’s here or Daytona or Atlanta.
“How do we work together as a team between Joey, Austin and myself and Harrison? How do we try to support each other and try to do the best we can for our groups? I feel like we do a better job at teamwork here than anybody else. I feel like we constantly look for each other. We constantly have each other’s backs, and that’s what you need here.”
Kyle Larson doesn’t know how to run up front here and he’ll tell you that too.
“With my track record here, I would love to be more than 18 points above the cutline coming here but I feel like it, despite having only one career top-5 here in my whole career, but I do feel like we do a good job running up front but just also end up in a crash too.”
Starting lineup
- Michael McDowell
- Austin Cindric
- Todd Gilliland
- Kyle Busch
- Ryan Blaney
- Joey Logano
- Austin Dillon
- Denny Hamlin
- Harrison Burton
- Daniel Hemric
- Chase Elliott
- Kyle Larson
- Brad Keselowski
- Tyler Reddick
- Ty Gibbs
- William Byron
- Shane Van Gisbergen
- Ryan Preece
- Josh Berry
- Chris Buescher
- Christopher Bell
- Noah Gragson
- Alex Bowman
- Martin Truex, Jr.
- AJ Allmendinger
- Bubba Wallace
- Ross Chastain
- Corey LaJoie
- John Hunter Nemechek
- Erik Jones
- Daniel Suarez
- Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
- Anthony Alfredo
- Cody Ware
- Justin Haley
- Chase Briscoe
- Carson Hocevar
- BJ McLeod
- Zane Smith
- JJ Yeley