Front Row McD: Michael McDowell and the No. 34 Are In Full Rhythm for the Daytona 500

Sitting on the outside of the front row, the 2021 Daytona 500 winner is in a good position to win the Great American Race for the 2nd time in his career

Michael McDowell may be one of the more diverse drivers in the NASCAR field leading up to the official start of the 2024 season.

The NASCAR veteran has seen it all in his career, but over the past few seasons, he has been riding in a great spot with Front Row Motorsports, bringing the team two wins over the past three seasons -- including the 2021 Daytona 500 -- and new life.

“Yeah, it's definitely the start of it,” McDowell told AutoRacingDigest.com in an exclusive interview. “I mean, there's way more to it and it would take me an hour to break it down, but I'll give you a real quick snapshot.

"We've always had good people and we were getting better and better as an organization with people and with our processes and procedures. Then COVID happens and then they lock down development, so you can't build any new parts and pieces. You can't develop any new sway bars or clips or anything new and fancy.

"And then we had time to sort of regroup and catch up a little bit because the big teams were always developing the latest and greatest, newest thing. Well, if you remember the Next Gen car was supposed to come out in 2021, not 2022. It got delayed a year due to COVID. So, there was a spending freeze. There was a parts freeze. There was a development freeze. That's what let us to kind of catch up to the competition a little bit and then we got a brand-new car and everybody's back to square one.

"And then we've been able to kind of stay with it. So those factors are what really allowed us to close the gap to the competition. And lots of hard work and lots of changes over the years. But those two years is what kind of reset us to be able to contend with the bigger teams.”

Last season would end up being a career season for McDowell, but the journey to get to being one of the contending drivers in NASCAR has been a striving one for the Arizona-born 39-year-old.

“Yeah, for sure,” says McDowell. “When I first got into NASCAR, for me it was a little bit of a starting over and I was really fortunate to have good advice from Scott Pruett and Boris Said and guys like that, that had already done what I was trying to do. They had already gone from IndyCar or sports cars to NASCAR and the common thing that those guys are telling me is you have to go and not be a road racer.

"Like you can't enter as a road racer. You have to go and do what they do and run the short tracks and do it the right way and come up because it's so hard to learn that style of racing and it really was. It was a hard transition. I came in when (Jacques) Villeneuve came in and (Dario) Franchitti came in and Patrick Carpentier was coming in and Juan Pablo Montoya was coming in and there was all these guys kind of transitioning at the time, and Scott Speed, AJ Allmendinger and others.

"There were a lot of guys kind of transitioning in and it just shows how hard it is and how challenging it is. I mean, Franchitti's world-class, an unbelievable driver. But, without doing that path where you really learn the short tracks and kind of the grassroots, it's hard to just jump in an Xfinity car and be switched on. So, I do think that it was a bit of a learning curve.

"When I got into the ARCA series, I felt like, 'Oh, this is going to be easy. I can do this.' And then when I got in the Cup Series, it was a lot of humble pie. It's just so challenging at this level. But I really feel like this Next Gen has helped me out a ton. Not that I wasn't good in the other car, it was more of not having the equipment I needed to run where we run now.

"So the Next Gen car did two things: It really leveled the playing field so small teams could contend and really. it's very similar to sports car racing and the idea of the platform of the chassis and parts and pieces and all that when I was running it in prototypes, Daytona prototypes.

"The cars drive more like a sports car now than they did back then. So that helped a little bit, but you know getting the same equipment and having the same parts and pieces was a big part of helping us get to that next level.”

Michael McDowell hopes to earn his 2nd Daytona 500 win in the last four years. Starting on the outside of the front row for Sunday's race (weather permitting), he has a very good chance of doing just that. Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

McDowell’s background will always be credited to his roots in road racing, whether that be open-wheeled or four-fender cars. But the connections he has made in his career have compared in success, such as the likes of Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron, both of whom have ties with the 2021 500 Champion.

"It was really two parts to that," McDowell said. "You know not my first, but Felipe’s first 24 Hours was really his first race I believe in a sports car. He had a scholarship program through, I believe at the time Sunoco, and came over and did the 24 hours with me and we ended up getting on the podium that 24 Hour, the first one out-of-the-box.

"So, I've always paid really close attention to his career. Obviously, he went on to Formula One and then came back and all those things. But, I stayed in contact with him and have seen him throughout the years. But you know, Dane Cameron, his father Ricky Cameron was my engineer for several years and his uncle, Steve, was the team manager of Finland Motorsports when I drove sports cars.

"So that family's just been a big part of my career and helping really launch my career. So you know, Dane was a little kid when I got started with his dad and with his uncle and he wasn’t even racing go-karts yet, he wasn't old enough. So, I'm aging myself (he said with a laugh). But just to see Dane and Felipe get that monumental win, obviously a Rolex 24 is a huge win. It definitely was exciting and fun, but it is hard for me to watch. It is just like any of those races that you have on your bucket list.

"I've done it, I think, six or seven times and I have been on the podium, but you know haven't won the overall in the 24 being so close. I would love to have more opportunities at it. But you know as your career goes on and things happen, it just hasn’t worked out. But I'm hoping that whenever my NASCAR run is over, I'll have an opportunity to go back to sports car racing because I love it. I love the different tracks and just the challenges and intermingling and classes and traffic and how hard that is to navigate.

"And it's so different now too. I mean it's so different. The GTD and GTD Pro and the LMP2 guys. It's not like the old days where guys get out of the way and they are making room. Those guys are battling so hard for their own classes that it really makes traffic a challenge. So, it's fun to watch. The cars are great. It's just good to see the series strong and obviously with the international splash of being able to take those cars and run them in WEC and run them at the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a big deal, because in years past when I ran Daytona prototypes, it was just in IMSA. There really wasn't anything else you could do with that car. So, I'm glad to see that sports car racing as a whole is healthy and doing good.”

McDowell’s racing pedigree obviously features a long list of racing legends as mentors but the win at the Daytona 500 became what would make the veteran a legend himself at hallowed banks at Daytona.

In a race that was filled with drama and suspense, McDowell had studied how things would potentially play out in the race.

“We had weather," McDowell said, similar to what may be on tap for Sunday's Daytona 500. "So the race started, and then I think it was delayed when it started. Then we had another big rain shower. And I mean tons of rain. I was like, 'There's no way we're going to go back racing again.'

"I've sort of learned over the years that you just want to stay locked in, like you're gonna race mentally, and also to like hydration and all that stuff because the bottom line is that I wouldn't do on Monday what I do on Sunday for the race cars. How you prepare and how much you drink and all the supplements and all the stuff that you're taking. So just staying locked in, not allowing too many distractions. I don't go back to the bus. I go back to the hauler and I just kind of stay in that race mode because if I go back to the bus, my wife and my kids are there and for me I'm just staying locked in until they call it and say we're not going to go racing.

"I just stay prepared like we're going to go racing and one thing that I do is being that we had some lapse there is go back, study data, study film and see if anybody did anything new or cool that you can learn from. I just kind of stay locked in. That was definitely a long night and right before the rain came, there was a big crash and we were in it a little bit and we had some damage and so that was the thing is we were looking at the damage, looking at pictures, looking at videos, figuring all right: How bad is it? Can we fix it when we go back green? Because obviously, you're gonna have a pit stop and so the car obviously wasn't too bad. And some of the damage that we had was probably good damage and a decent spot.

"So yeah we kind of knew that if we got back rolling again that we were in a good spot and Daytona for me has been a strong track, not just the win, but you know, I don't know exactly the stats -- I probably should -- but I would say I'm probably in the top five in the top 10 categories over the last five to seven years of how many top tens we've scored there. So, it wasn't so much a fluke for us. It was more of a building of like, we ran 6th and then we ran 4th and then we ran 5th and then we ran 3rd and being sort of always in that picture, but just never able to get those last few spots.

"So, when we were getting down to five to go and I was running 5th and I was like, “Oh, I did not want to be 3rd, 4th, 5th.' And so, luckily Brad (Keselowski) and I were able to make a move to kind of jump a row of cars there and get into that second and third spot, and once I was in that third spot, I really felt like I was in the right spot. I felt like I knew I was going to wait until the white flag. I have studied Joey (Logano) and Brad so much, I just knew exactly what they were going to do.

"And I'm not saying that to be cocky or arrogant, but there's four or five guys that I've studied really, really hard at Daytona and superspeedways and it's Denny (Hamlin), Joey (and others). Those are the guys that I study all the time because they're the best at it. I mean, Brad's won like seven or nine times at Talladega. And Joey is always in contention to win those races, and I’ll throw (Ryan) Blaney in that mix too, but this was prior to Blaney really breaking out in superspeedway racing. Those were the guys that I would study. And I just knew that I was in the right spot.

"So the hard part in superspeedway racing is getting into that spot, maintaining it, and not having anything happen leading up to it. So yeah, it all worked out.”

For McDowell though his love and passion for racing in sports cars is still there.

Even once his NASCAR days are done, McDowell said he would love to be back racing in the style of racing that has provided him so much to his career, even citing his desire to race at Le Mans.

But for the two-time Cup Series winner, 2024 is looking like a season of checking off the list of accomplishments, starting with his impressive qualifying finish at Daytona ... or as you might say, he's starting on the front row for Front Row.