On Sunday at Talladega (Ala.) Superspeedway, Michael McDowell came within a few hundredths of a second of earning his second NASCAR Cup Series victory.
After he was second at the white flag, the Front Row Motorsports driver placed third behind Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney.
It was the closest McDowell’s been to a return trip to victory lane since he was victorious in the 2021 Daytona 500.
“It’s good to be close. It’s been a great season,” McDowell said afterward. “Really proud of the season we’re having. Man, come up a car length short of victory lane, it’s tough for sure.”
Most people might not call going winless through 31 races and missing the playoffs a “great” season. But those people aren’t McDowell.
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At the age of 37, the 2022 NASCAR Cup season is McDowell’s 15th on the circuit and just his sixth in a full-time ride. Sunday’s Talladega race was his 424th career start.
His Talladega result improved his season total for top-10 finishes to a career-best 12. Before 2022, he had never had more than five in a season. From 2018 through 2021, he had 12 top 10s total.
A former sports car and open-wheel racer, four of his top 10s have come at road courses — Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway (third), Road America (eighth), Indianapolis Motor Speedway (eighth) and Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International (sixth).
Now the series heads to its final road course event of the season, on the Charlotte ROVAL.
“I think we’ll be able to contend next week, too, when we go to the ROVAL,” McDowell said. “I feel like we’re always strong on the road courses, this year in particular with this Next Gen car.
‘We’ve been strong at a lot of racetracks. A lot of races still for us to go that we feel strong at. Homestead test (two weeks ago) went great. I’m proud of (crew chief) Blake Harris and this group. (Team owner) Bob Jenkins has given us all the tools to go out and be competitive. We’re getting to show it each week.
“To get through the season and not get a win would be disappointing, for sure.”
As McDowell noted, his success is at least partially related to the parity brought on by the first season of the Next Gen car. If McDowell were to win Sunday, he’d become the 20th different winner this season, a Cup Series record. He’s also trying to become the fifth non-playoff driver to win in the postseason.
The improved performance of the No. 34 team has come under the direction of Harris, who is in his first year as a Cup Series crew chief after years spent at Joe Gibbs Racing and Furniture Row Racing as a car chief for Martin Truex Jr.
McDowell told SPEED SPORT in July that Harris’ positive influence has impacted his racing “mentality.”
“I’m always pushing hard to get everything I can but he constantly wants to make the car better,” McDowell said. “A lot of times I get stuck in that zone where we’ve got a top-10 car, ‘don’t mess it up, let’s not change too much.’ And he’s used to, if you’re 10th that’s not good enough, you got to keep pushing, you got to find more. And so he’s done a good job of pushing me to make adjustments and keep trying to fine tune it when I feel like ‘we’re too close. Don’t screw it up.'”
Harris backed this up last month when SPEED SPORT talked to him a few days before the start of the Round of 12.
“I don’t know that I had expectations of being able to do what we’ve done at some of our highs this season,” Harris said. “We were able to go up and lead some races and be in contention at the end. So I think some of our highs have definitely exceeded what I anticipated. But at the same time, you know, I look at the 11 top 10s, and I think a half of those we could probably turn those into top fives. In the moment, you just keep pushing for more.”
One low point for the team was when the team received a 100-point penalty and Harris was suspended four races for an illegally modified part on McDowell’s car at Pocono Raceway.
Front Row Motorsports appealed the penalty in order to get “all our stuff in a row,” which allowed Harris to remain in his role for the July 31 race on the Indianapolis road course.
“I knew at that moment, the most important thing was to go perform,” Harris said. “If I felt more pressure on any race, I felt like it was that race.”
While McDowell didn’t win at Indy, both he and teammate Todd Gilliland qualified in the top 10 and then finished eighth and fourth, respectively.
“We both had speed all weekend,” Harris said. “I would say that it’s the best weekend that this company has had in history for two of their cars combined. And so that was important going into suspension. I felt like we needed to prove that the issues that we had in the tech center weren’t related to anything performance wise, because you know how the perception is right? ‘These guys are doing something wrong, and they got into trouble and everything’s gonna fall off.’ I know that the issues that we had were silly mistakes.
“And it was super important to me that, you know, we didn’t let any of the momentum that in the progress that we’ve built in our program (get) bogged down. These guys, a lot of the guys that are here haven’t been through the same things that I’ve been through in my career, and I know how these things can affect an organization. I don’t want to say people lay down, but they get discouraged.”
When the No. 34 team ultimately didn’t make the playoffs, Harris said they “didn’t really talk about it a whole lot.”
Instead, they moved forward with the intent of acting “like we are in” the playoffs.
“When we do get in the playoffs, we have to use this as a learning process to to be prepared,” Harris said. “The first round of playoffs doesn’t do you any good unless you get that second round and we just got to figure out where our limit is.”
In addition to thinking his team can be “a threat” to win at the ROVAL, Harris said his team also has the Oct. 23 race at Homestead-Miami Speedway “circled.”
“I think there’s some similarities there to Darlington, and we were strong in both Darlington races,” Harris said of McDowell’s seventh-place finish in the spring and his sixth-place result in the Southern 500.
Last year, McDowell started and finished sixth at Homestead.
“That’s one that I think it can be an unconventional winner, for sure,” Harris said.