INDIANAPOLIS – Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Brickyard was a perfect example of the best driver, and the best car won the race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But it remains unlikely that many thought it would be Michael McDowell who dominated the race on the 14-turn, 2.439-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
It’s undeniable that the Front Row Motorsports driver had the best car in Sunday’s 82-lap race. He had his Horizon Hobby Ford in front of the field three times for 54 laps in the race and defeated Chase Elliott’s Chevrolet by 0.937 seconds.
Even as Elliott was closing in on McDowell in the closing stages of the race, his margin was comfortable heading to the checkered flag.
It was the second NASCAR Cup Series victory of his career. His other win came in the 2021 Daytona 500.
Don’t call McDowell’s win a “Cinderella Story” however. The driver and team will contend that since the Next Gen car entered NASCAR Cup Series racing in 2022, McDowell has been among the five best road racers in the series.
“Absolutely not,” the winner said emphatically. “I think we’ve been the fastest road course car since this Next-Gen car over the average of it, and I think statistically it’ll show that. I think if you just look at the average finish and you look at average running position, we’ve been a top 5 car every single road course race since this Next-Gen car has come in.
“Is it a Cinderella story from a lot of different aspects? Maybe. But off of pure performance, like I feel like we’ve been nailing it and having a shot at it.
“But I also look at it as like, we’re going up against some really big teams with a lot of resources, and to do what we did today is pretty awesome.”
Crew chief Travis Peterson and general manager Jerry Freeze certainly don’t believe their team was wearing the “Glass Slipper.” Front Row Motorsports prepared the best car in the field and on this day, McDowell was the best driver.
“We rolled off the truck, we were the fastest car here in practice, fastest in first-round qualifying, qualified fourth, and then Michael just dominated the race today,” Freeze said. “Michael did a stellar job, but he needed a stellar race car, and Travis gave it to him.
“To be here at Indy and kiss the bricks is something I never would have thought we could have ever accomplished at Front Row Motorsports 15 years ago when I started working for Bob Jenkins. So, it’s really neat to be here today and celebrate that win.
“Like I said to basically dominate the weekend is hardly a Cinderella story. We’ve been fortunate, this is the fourth Cup win that Front Row Motorsports has had, and I think you could say that the first three, circumstances kind of played their way into being in the position to get the checkered flag at the end, but this one was just a real butt kicking, and so I’m especially proud of this win.”
The team has earned a position in the NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with the victory.
McDowell also becomes one of the few drivers that has won the Daytona 500 and a NASCAR Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
That puts him in an elite category.
“You put it in that perspective, it is,” Freeze admitted. “It’s something that I think we’ve got to start working on some of our marketing propaganda and promote that a little bit.
“You usually think of those top-tier organizations that have those accomplishments, so for our little team, as I might call it, to have a Cup Series win at Daytona and at the Brickyard is really huge.
“I’ve been at Front Row for 15 years, and we started off with a team that it was just an accomplishment to make the field for a race, and it’s just kind of grown from there, just incrementally. That’s what Bob Jenkins, he kind of challenged us with that from the start, let’s just get a little bit better from year to year to year, and I feel like we’ve accomplished that.
“So, the partnerships around the team have gotten incrementally better over the years. I still think our sponsorship base is a fraction of what some of those big organizations are, and so having this as one of our lists of accomplishments as we’re talking to those marketing executives about joining us with Front Row Motorsports, I think has got to have some impact, so it’s going to be curious how that plays out in the months and years to come.”
One of the aspects that helped the race flow with the final 77 laps green flag racing was NASCAR’s decision to award the stage points without stopping for stage breaks after the first and second stage. NASCAR does that on the road course races and on the street course at Chicago.
“I love what they’ve done with the road course format,” Peterson said. “I think this is how it should stay, selfishly, because Michael does good.
“But I think it’s a disservice to guys who run good on these tracks to have to pit before a stage, give up all those points the way the format was before.
“I think it’s great. I think we saw Martin Truex do something real similar in Sonoma. Just on a given day, if a good road course racer gets a car that he has a good feel for, you can just see days like this, and this is what’s going to probably happen at road course races without the stages.”
McDowell grew up as a road racer. He was the 2004 USF2000 champion and is a member of the USF2000 Hall of Fame. He also competed in two Champ Car Series contests in 2005, all on streets and road courses including a 12th-place finish in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia and an 11th place at Mexico City driving for Paul Gentilozzi.
From 2004 to 2012, he also competed in 32 races in the Rolex GrandAm Sports Car Series.
“I think it helped a lot,” McDowell said of his road racing background. “But what’s hard about it, and I was thinking about it when SVG (Shane van Gisbergen) came in and waxed us, is it’s been 16, 17 years since I’ve run road course cars full-time.
“Even though I have that experience, it’s a long time ago, and I’ve raced a lot of ovals and created a lot of bad habits doing that, and I don’t mean bad habits, but you understand what I’m saying, for road course racing, different habits.
“I think that it helps, and I think that this Next-Gen car probably was what I needed to be able to show what I could do. It’s not just because it leveled the playing field. That’s part of it. The other part of it is it’s very similar to what I raced before going into the Cup Series with the Daytona Prototype as far as the floor on the car, the downforce, the sequential shift, all those things.
“I’ve been really comfortable in this car since it’s unloaded, not just on the road courses but the ovals, as well. It’s played into my wheelhouse, but I don’t think it’s a huge advantage anymore because I’m not doing much of it.
“Now, if I was running five or ten races a year in other forms of road racing, then I think it would be helpful, but I’m an oval guy that has road course experience, because it’s so long ago.”
The natural road racing experience and feel came back to McDowell Sunday at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the road course and the result was one of the most impressive and dominant drives by a NASCAR Cup Series driver this season.