“Yeah, this was ... this feels pretty catastrophic," McDowell's crew chief Travis Peterson told NASCAR.com. "We never even had a chance to race (Monday) with the issues we had with the nose. The damage we had. It just really sucks. Obviously our goal going into this stretch was just to stay within a fighting chance going to our best tracks and we did that, which doesn’t feel that way at the moment but you know three points is overcome-able. Honestly, I’d put my money on us right now if it was going into the races the way it is.”
Heading into Michigan, McDowell said he would need a clean day to manage the points situation. Ultimately, the team didn't have a clean day after the early contact with Chase Briscoe hampered their race. Road courses play into the hand of McDowell, who's been a cognoscente of left- and right-turn circuits even outside of the NASCAR Cup Series. In Saturday's media availability at Michigan, McDowell expressed his confidence heading to Indy and Watkins Glen after his results at Circuit of The Americas (12th), Sonoma (seventh) and Chicago (seventh) this season.“I feel like we’re gonna be able to go to Indy, Watkins Glen and have that kind of speed, but it’s road racing. It’s kind of like superspeedway racing," McDowell said. "You can get tangled up and we saw Turn 1 be wild last year at Indy. That kind of happened to us. We were a top-five car there last year and late restarts got pushed into the grass and ended up finishing eighth or ninth, so we know that we’re gonna have decent speed."
To make the playoffs, McDowell will need to climb back in front of Gibbs, and fend off the likes of Daniel Suárez and AJ Allmendinger, who have both won at road courses in their Cup careers.“It’s not like those guys aren’t good on road courses. If anything, they’re really good," McDowell said. "But the flip side of that is … so are we. So we’re gonna be able to manage. We’re gonna be able to score some points and I think we’ll also be able to score stage points and you know there’s been conversation about that. In general, that’s one of the things that’s helped us a lot is because in years past, we’re always trying to win the race, not trying to score points right? So we’d always flip the stages. We’d always pit with two to go and so I don’t have a lot of stage points on road courses because we were always on that strategy where now that’s kind of wiped away. When we’re running third or fourth, we’re gonna get those stage points and it’s not gonna hurt our strategy.
“Last year, I think we gave up probably 50 or 60 stage points because we were trying to win the race where this year we’ll be able to capitalize on it.”
Suárez called his shot at Michigan, saying he could still point his way into the postseason despite a 34-point impediment to overcome. That's exactly what Suárez did Monday, finishing sixth and scoring 14 stage points in the process to cut his deficit to just five points behind 16th. MORE: Suárez, Chastain break down Trackhouse's playoff outlook "I feel like we still have maybe one more step to go to be able to win races, but it was definitely a race that we needed, especially heading into two road course races," Suárez said. "Now we have a little momentum on our side and I’m optimistic for the final three races of the regular season." Allmendinger, the inaugural Indy road course winner, has 24 points to gain to surmount the cutoff and is banking on the next two races as his shot to reach just his second postseason. However, Allmendinger touted the evolution of Cup Series drivers on road courses that has seen a transition from just a handful of drivers who could win on them to most of the series being good on that track type.“If you really look at the Cup Series now, especially how many road courses we have, you probably have more on the positive side of road-course guys who you've gotta worry about," Allmendinger said. "All the drivers put a lot of effort into it, so there’s not many guys now you look at saying, ‘OK, they’re gonna struggle at the road course.’"
From practice at Indy to the checkered flag at Watkins Glen, every lap is going to be must-watch as the best of the best play high-speed chess on their favorite discipline for their playoff hopes.