New world: Mcdowell in top tier territory
Journeyman coming into LV on hot streak
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Michael Mcdowell was rolling along at Homestead-miami Speedway when he saw another driver signal for a car to pass.
When Mcdowell came upon the same driver, he wasn’t given the same courtesy.
“I literally saw a driver wave another driver by and then race me for the next seven laps like it was the last lap,” Mcdowell recalled Tuesday.
He declined to identify the rival who refused to give Mcdowell an easy pass over the weekend, but it was an eye-opener for the Daytona 500 winner. A journeyman driver for small-budget teams, Mcdowell isn’t usually racing at the front of the pack or passing cars for top-10 finishes.
But since his Daytona 500 victory — his first win in 358 previous Cup Series starts — Mcdowell has found himself running with a different crowd. He has opened the season with three top-10 finishes through three races, just one shy of his total last year.
The strong start with Front Row Motorsports has put Mcdowell in uncharted territory. In the final laps Sunday at Homestead he found himself trying to pass Kevin Harvick for fifth, a previously unthinkable scenario.
It has all validated the effort Mcdowell put in over 14 years, but it hasn’t translated into on-track respect for the No. 34 Ford from his peers.
“There are top guys that don’t want to be passed by the 34 and I get it, I understand that because they think that they’re having a really bad day if the 34 is going around them,” said Mcdowell, who also acknowledged putting up too strong of a fight when his car was a perpetual backmarker.
“On the flipside, I somewhat deserve it because I race the guts out of everybody and always have,” he said. “Even when I was in bad cars I never made it easy on anybody, so I don’t expect them to make it easy on me.”
Mcdowell next goes to Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday ranked a career-high fourth in the Cup standings. His best finish in the final standings was 23rd last season, and when he opened this year, Mcdowell doubted his team could crack the top 16 for the playoffs.
He still wasn’t sure how Front Row stacked up after winning the Daytona 500, which wasn’t exactly a fluke because Mcdowell is a respected superspeedway racer. But he has yet to fall back into the field.
“To make a big jump like we did, I wouldn’t say that it’s a complete, like, unbelievable shock, but it’s pretty close to it,” Mcdowell said.
The schedule to start this season has benefited Mcdowell in that the Cup Series has raced on three different circuits. He typically does well at superspeedways and road courses, the first two venues that opened the season. And he was 15th at Homestead last year, giving Front Row a baseline to work with in its return last week.
But the shift to Las Vegas, a traditional 1.5-mile intermediate, will be a true test of how much Front Row has improved.