FONTANA, Calif. -- Two weeks before the start of the 2009 season, Michael McDowell was sitting at home, waiting for the phone to ring. Now he's sitting 14th in the Nationwide Series standings in his debut with JTG-Daugherty Motorsports.

Talk about making a good first impression.

"During the offseason, I was looking for a job," McDowell said Friday during practice for the Stater Bros. 300 at Auto Club Speedway. "This came together very late. Tad [Geschickter] and I were only able to put this together about two weeks before Daytona, so I was sweating bullets during the offseason, trying to figure out if I was going to even make it to Daytona."

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It's good to start the year off with a decent amount of points. It's good for team morale and for the whole program. Any time you can run in the top 15 at Daytona, and bring home a car and use it another day, that's a good day.

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-- MICHAEL MCDOWELL

With only a pair of practice sessions under his belt, McDowell qualified 48th of the 49 cars who attempted to make the show last weekend -- that meant rolling off 41st. However, McDowell stayed out of trouble, worked his way through the field and brought the No. 47 Toyota home in 14th place.

"To be honest with you, the thing I was most impressed with was that we unloaded, ran all of practice, all of Happy Hour and there were no problems," McDowell said. "Everybody was clearanced right, there were no mechanical issues all weekend and that just goes to show how well they do at the shop. I was impressed by that.

"I was a little bit nervous with everything coming together so late that you're going to have some teething problems and we really haven't. This is a professional race team and they've done a great job and I sort of fell into it at the right time."

McDowell's Sprint Cup debut last season might be summed up in one visual: the violent crash he experienced during qualifying at Texas. The car slammed into the SAFER barrier at a severe angle, sending the car flipping down the backstretch multiple times. Amazingly, McDowell climbed from the demolished vehicle with nothing injured, except perhaps to his pride (watch video).

His best finish came in the Richmond fall race, when he was 20th, his first race back in the car after being replaced by veteran Mike Skinner in an effort to chase top-35 owner's points. After failing to qualify at Kansas, the former open-wheel and sports car champion found himself out of work.

But he also learned some important lessons, the most important being that speed isn't always the determining factor in racing.

"One of things I learned last year was that you can chase the [stopwatch] and the leaderboard all you want, but it's really about driving where you're comfortable and you can run more than one lap," McDowell said. "Especially at these big places, where it's easy to go out there and run one or two laps and you don't get a feel for where you're at, or what you need to work on.

"I'm trying to focus on five-, six-lap runs and see where the tires fall off. That's one thing we have learned. Hopefully, the track will take a little bit of rubber but the tires seem to fall off fairly quickly and that's something that's going to be a challenge for everybody, and something we're going to have to manage."

And getting regular seat time in stock cars is only going to help, according to McDowell.

"Any time you race every weekend, it's going to help," McDowell said. "You just build momentum, you build confidence. Running the Cup car last year at all these places definitely helped. As you can see, they're pretty difficult to drive. They're pretty busy. The Nationwide car's got a little less power and a lot more downforce, so you really feel you can hustle the car around a little more."

Now it's a matter of building on Daytona, and finding the chemistry that creates championship-contending teams. And if McDowell continues to take leaps to realizing his potential, it could be only a matter of time before fans forget days like Texas and remember ones like Daytona.

"I think you take momentum from any good finish," McDowell said. "It's good to start the year off with a decent amount of points. It's good for team morale and for the whole program. Any time you can run in the top 15 at Daytona, and bring home a car and use it another day, that's a good day."