This is, by his own definition, an ‘opportunity race’ for Michael McDowell on Sunday at Sonoma Raceway.
To the credit of Front Row Motorsports, it’s no longer a superspeedway win or bust kind of big picture season outlook and McDowell even contends on downforce tracks these days, including from the pole last weekend at Gateway.
But road courses remain his bread and butter and there are only two of them remaining in the regular season, on Sunday at Sonoma and next month on the Streets of Chicago. There’s also Daytona in August.
Due to a lot of misfortune more than pure pace, McDowell is facing must-win odds to once again make the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, something he accomplished in 2023 after winning on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course.
At the same time, at 39-years-old, McDowell isn’t putting any unnecessary pressure on himself this weekend either.
“These are opportunity weekends for us and we know that, but I think what I’ve learned over the last few years in particular with having faster cars and being in contention more often is just go out there and do your job and don’t overthink it and don’t put too much extra pressure on yourself, and I think we have a car today that will have a shot at the pole,” McDowell said.
He was sixth in practice, but with what amounts to a brand new race track due to an off-season repave, there is a lot more data to crunch and variables to work through before the race.
“It’s hard to tell from practice just because not everybody was on the same page as far as what they were doing with tires and whether they were making a mock run or a race run, and then you throw in the mix of everybody having a night to digest the data, work through the setups and make changes today, it’s going to be a very different racetrack and guys are going to have different race cars today, too,” McDowell said.
“But, yesterday I felt like we were close. We had speed to contend and we just have to put ourselves in position, no different than we did at Indy. We felt strong there. I think we qualified fourth or fifth, so we weren’t sitting on the pole, but felt like we had a strong car and then obviously in the race it worked out that way, too. You just have to do it. You’ve just got to put yourself in position and hope that you execute all day long and everything goes your way.”
It’s become a common refrain in the modern Cup Series but qualifying and track position is extremely important due to the challenges passing in this car on road courses. McDowell wants to control the pace of this race like he did at Indianapolis.
“Today is important, for sure, and Saturdays in qualifying in particular have been very important all year,” McDowell said. “We’ve seen it with this car in particular that it matters quite a lot, so everywhere we go it’s important to qualify well and I’m proud of that effort that we’ve had this year. I don’t know the exact number, but I think 10 times we’ve made it to the second round this year, so that’s pretty good. We just have to capitalize on it on Sunday when it counts.”
And don’t misunderstand what McDowell means about dismissing pressure. It’s not that he doesn’t take the consequence of the weekend seriously. There’s just already enough out there that he doesn’t have to give himself more incentive.
He knows the stakes.
“When I say just go do your job and don’t put any extra pressure, I think that’s just for me personally because I already put so much pressure on myself,” he said. “I’m already there every week, and so I think your preparation and your planning and what you’re going to do for the weekend intensifies, but like today, I’ve seen it too many times with myself – not saying this is a general thing, but if I just go out there and run the lap I know I can run, it’s usually okay.
“If I go out there and I overthink it and I push myself beyond what I’m capable of, I’ll make a mistake and be four or five spots worse than I would have been if I just would have done my job well. That’s more of the approach for me.
“It’s not that I don’t feel the pressure, I feel the pressure today to go out there and make the second round and have a shot at the pole and anything less than that will feel like we missed the mark. I just have learned with myself that I have the car to do it, I just go out there and do my job and it’ll be fine and not make any mistakes.”
And if he doesn’t win this weekend, it doesn’t change his sense of pressure or the expectations for the remaining races this season, road courses or otherwise.
“I felt like last week was a big miss for us, qualifying on the pole and having a shot to win that first stage and then it turning out to be a not so great day was a big miss for us,” he said. “I feel that pressure every weekend and I think that’s great that our race team is in a place where we can legitimately feel like we can challenge at most of the racetracks, if not every racetrack.
“So, Iowa, to me, is no different than this weekend. You go in with the same mentality of right now I would say we’re in a must-win. Mathematically, we’re not, but I feel like we’re in a must-win scenario and so you just take that approach every weekend. If your car is good enough to do it and you’re in the right position at the right time as we saw with Austin Cindric last week, you just have to put yourself in position and he did a great job of executing all day long. It looked like he wasn’t going to win the race and he comes around the last corner to take the white flag and now he’s locked into the playoffs.
“You can’t overdo it. You just have to take what you can get and put yourself in position week in and week out and hopefully it goes your way one time.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.