Michael McDowell was frank in assessing his 2023 season from the main stage at the NASCAR Awards last month in Nashville, taking time to also reflect on finding his place as a Cup Series regular – either full- or part-time – for the last 16 seasons.
“It’s great to have people understand just how hard it is to stay in this sport, and no doubt, it’s been a grind for me,” McDowell said. “So it’s taken me a long time not to suck, and so it’s been fun to not suck.”
That deadpan line drew laughter from his peers in the crowd at the Music City Center, but McDowell has enjoyed building on the strides made by his Front Row Motorsports No. 34 team all the same. The 38-year-old veteran posted comparable stats to his 2022 season, and though his number of top-10 finishes was lower (eight in 2023 vs. 12 last year), that figure was offset by more opportunities to contend for victories.
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McDowell pounced on that chance when it came in August, holding off two eager drivers in Chase Elliott and Daniel Suárez to convert a dominant win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course. That victory marked the next step of Front Row’s progression with its road-course program, but also vaulted McDowell back into the Cup Series Playoffs for the second time in three seasons.
“When we went back and really evaluated Sonoma, we felt like we were close to having the car to beat there and just needed to clean up a few things and make a few things better,” McDowell said, referencing a seventh-place result at the California road circuit in June. “And so it was a kind of a progression of we went from a fifth-place car to probably a second- or third-place car to having a race-winning car at Indy. And you don’t get that opportunity very often, or at least I haven’t.
“So to execute everything that you need to execute to actually win a race, because it’s not just about having the fastest car, right, you’ve got to do everything — strategy, pit stops, no penalties, cautions can’t fall at the wrong time or in between a pit cycle or something like that – so to have it go our way and have our team and our group execute was a really cool moment.”
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McDowell’s postseason appearance, however, was a short-lived one with elimination arriving early in the Round of 16. A crash in the playoff opener at Darlington and more contact the next week in Kansas put the No. 34 bunch at a deficit, but the team’s performance at the round-ending Bristol Motor Speedway night race provided a glimmer of hope.
McDowell qualified fourth and competed among the top five for the bulk of the 500-lapper before ultimately placing sixth – a career-best Bristol finish and an effort that he says made a statement about the team’s versatility.
“We legitimately put ourselves in position to win at a short track,” McDowell said. “So to me, that was probably one of the bigger accomplishments from an overall standpoint, and it was just a confidence booster to everybody in the organization that it doesn’t have to be a road course and it doesn’t have to be a superspeedway. We’ve been competitive at a lot of places, and we can do it at a high level.”
That spirit-lifter comes with the added boost of continuity for the team in 2024. McDowell and teammate Todd Gilliland re-signed with FRM just four days before the Indy victory, and McDowell says the core of his No. 34 group will return this season.
Those extensions include a welcoming-back for crew chief Travis Peterson, who will be in place for just his second year atop the pit box at the Cup Series level. That development is also a welcome sight for McDowell, who worked with his third crew chief in three seasons in 2023, with Peterson succeeding Blake Harris (2022) and Drew Blickensderfer (2019-21).
“It’s hard to build chemistry, and it’s hard to do what we did this year with all new people,” McDowell said, “and I’m thankful to say that we kept everybody on our program, minus one, and so that’s huge for us. We’ll go into the beginning of next year ready to do battle rather than trying to figure out each other’s names and how people work and where their strengths are, where their weaknesses are, what roles are best — just all those things. We’re going to be in a really good spot starting next year, and so I’m super-thankful for that. That’s a big part of, I think, what will make us successful next year.”