Matt Weaver
There are numerous reasons for crew chief Travis Peterson to feel optimistic about what he and Michael McDowell could accomplish in their second season working together.
For one, they are coming off their inaugural season working together at the Front Row Motorsports No. 34 team in which they won at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, made the playoffs and finished the final standings in 15th.
This is a driver who had his entire team taken from him when previous crew chief Blake Harris left for Hendrick Motorsports. Peterson was brought in after a five-year engineering stint at RFK Racing and built a team from scratch.
Lastly, the team is working through the process of forming a technical alliance with Team Penske after a lengthy stint getting such support from RFK.
Speaking to all of this on a Tuesday morning appearance on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, Peterson says the tenure and resource addition should give them a considerable leg up compared to where they were in the build-up to last season.
“Certainly nothing like last year because when I came in, I was the first one hired,” Peterson told hosts Pete Pistone and Mike Bagley. “It was me and me so I had to hire an entire team so that was a lot all the while learning a new organization.
“This off-season has been better. We’ve had two or three spots that got swapped out or someone left for another opportunity but it wasn’t the entire team like last season so it’s been alright.”
He said alright with a chuckle.
“With some of the new people, a couple of them were engineers and we’re shifting into a new technical alliance with Penske this year so we are going to go to the simulator with Ford,” he said of the off-season process. “But almost rather than working on setup and stuff like that, it’s just to get everyone up to speed and go through some dry runs of what practice scenarios and things like that would look like.
“It’s almost team practice to get new personnel and get communication back flowing and things like that more than it is developing the setup at this point. But we certainly have time to do that. Those days never shut off during the off-season.”
Then there is the alliance with Penske, which Peterson says is still being worked out, in terms of what exactly the information flow and allocation will look like.
“The short version is that the smaller teams like us kind of have to do things like that to survive because we don’t have the engineering departments,” Peterson said. “It’s getting the support for simulation tools or processes to measure parts and things like that.
“We kind of always done that with RFK for a long time and now we’re switching over to Penske. I can’t necessarily speak to all of it because we’re still in the middle of working out the details on the new ones but the gist is that we don’t have 20 engineers at our shop providing information … so you kind of have to go to a place that does have that and use their information.”
That’s especially important this year with all the Ford Performance teams swapping over to the new Mustang Dark Horse body style. It’s a drastically different design that what they raced with last year so there is a lot to learn.
“We’re still working through the process with Ford of getting turned on to all the aero data,” he said. “That’s something smaller teams typically don’t get access to even with technical alliances. They’re in the beginning of the development of that car.
“That car takes a shift compared to the old one in terms of whole new parts, new aero data. We’re learning a lot of that as well as being turned on to the information for the first time at Front Row. There is certainly a lot to unpack there.”
But all told, Peterson believes they elevated the expectations at the 34 team with what McDowell and their team accomplished last season.
“Certainly, the growth and excitement of getting better has been something fun to watch and be part of,” Peterson said. “It sets the stage to where you need to continue doing that, right?
“You hope that you haven’t hit your ceiling but you never know. Being able to build on a year that was really strong and to go into this year, the plan is to be stronger and get better, right? We finished 15th, got a win, made the playoffs and those kind of become your baseline expectations.
“We need to achieve that again. I’m not saying that’s easy to do but that’s where you set the bar and hopefully you can do more than that.”
Other takeaways
Why he and McDowell work
“I think our personalities click. That’s not always easy to do early and fast. I think the way we both communicate and understand honesty and sometimes fight and deal with those things. It kind of opened the doors quickly. We never beat around the bush or never not shared honest opinions because we were afraid of hurting feelings. That has helped. Our open communication style is what works right now.”
A well-rounded McDowell
“If you look at the whole narrative of what we’re talking about, just making him look better. Historically, everyone has a chance at superspeedways and he had an opportunity to shine. I think he is hands-down one of the best road course racers in the sport up against anyone on any given weekend so I think he’s been able to shine in subpar equipment for a very long time for much of his career. So, people have noticed him for that. We’re just now getting to a point where we can be relevant everywhere and he can show I’m not just a guy that shows up everywhere else. Our goal is to be the statistics and continue to improve on the tracks that haven’t been his best over the years.
The early season grind
“Our truck is coming back from being serviced and getting wrapped and all that. The Clash cars are the first ones coming off the line right now. Certainly, going out west, coming back and going out west again is part of every season. I’ll certainly say I wish we didn’t have to go all the way to LA, if I had to pick a start to the season, because those are the logistics that put you a little behind before the biggest race of the year.
“But it is nice that we go Daytona (and then) Atlanta before going back to the west coast. I do appreciate that change on the schedule. It’s always busy. You always have to stay extra busy at the start of the season. Last season, it was funny because we had a lot of new guys on the team and I kept telling them for the first 3-4 weeks that it gets better, I promise you, because this is the hardest stretch of the year. I kept telling them that I promise it wouldn’t be this bad for 38 races.”
Iowa and the Brickyard 400
“I think going to Iowa is awesome. I think it’s a neat track. I raced there in the K&N Series. I think it’s a cool part of the country to go to. I think they’ll pack it out with fans. I’m looking forward to that event. The Indy oval is a bittersweet one. I love going to Indy anytime we do. It’s an iconic race track. The oval is a place I would like to go win. It would be perfect if we could get the first one back in the NextGen alongside the last one on the Road Course. Certainly, when you win and dominate a weekend, you don’t want to have that one taken off the schedule immediately because that would have been an easy one to circle.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.
