Underdog Michael McDowell went from 0-for-357 to Daytona 500 winner: ‘It’s just overwhelming’

What a win for the NASCAR vet.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Veteran NASCAR driver Michael McDowell was 0-for-357 races across his 13 Cup Series season. No wins and just three top-5 finishes in more than a decade at the sport’s top level.

But in Sunday’s Daytona 500, the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford driver opened his 14th year by pulling off an incredible upset, taking his first career checkered flag in the series’ season opener at Daytona International Speedway. He did it despite only leading the biggest race of the year for part of the final lap, which included a fiery, eight-car wreck.

And he said he didn’t know for the whole cool-down lap that he actually won it.

“When I came across the [finish] line, I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, is this possible?’” McDowell said. “I mean, ‘It’s possible that we just won the race. I don’t know if it is.’ And then immediately, it sunk in that if we didn’t, I’m going to be so upset.”

Luckily for the 36-year-old driver, it didn’t come to that. But the brief mystery over who won the race was the result of a caution flag coming out on that final victorious lap.

With less than a lap to go, McDowell was running third behind then-leader Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski. But when Keselowski went to make a move on the backstretch, he and Logano violently wrecked going into Turn 3, allowing McDowell to capitalize and pull ahead.

Because McDowell was the leader when NASCAR threw the caution flag out for the multi-car crash, he was declared the winner, edging out reigning Cup Series champion Chase Elliott and 2018 Daytona 500 winner Austin Dillon.

“It was a long [cool-down] lap,” said McDowell, who’s in his fourth season with Front Row Motorsports. “And it really became a blur when they said that we won and to go to the start finish line. It really was. It’s just overwhelming.”

Understandably, McDowell was in disbelief, at first, after the race.

But his crew chief, Drew Blickensderfer, credits him for knowing how to position himself in superspeedway races — which can be chaotic with multi-car wrecks — to at least contend for a strong finish.

Although this was McDowell’s first win, he’s had some success before at Daytona with teams that don’t typically contend for checkered flags. Previously at the track, he had six top-10 finishes and two top-5s, most recently finishing fifth in the 2019 Daytona 500 behind Denny Hamlin.

“Michael has done a really good job his entire career at [superspeedway] racing of wedging himself in with probably a sub-par car and making sure he was there at the end,” said Blickensderfer, who also won the 2009 Daytona 500 with driver Matt Kenseth. “And that never wins races, but he’s always come out on the better part of that.”

Well, never until just after midnight Monday, following a nearly six-hour rain delay after only the first 15 laps Sunday.

McDowell said his disbelief shifted to a more humble train of thought about 90 minutes after the race, after he finally had some time to consider how he etched his place in NASCAR history after so many years of pushing through grueling, nine-month seasons with a zero in the win column.

“When you show up to the race track,” McDowell explained, “and you know that you’re — I don’t even know how to say it — you’re just in the way, taking up space, it’s hard to do that year after year and week after week. So you’ve got to have a bigger purpose than that. For me, it was knowing that I would get an opportunity eventually.”

With the checkered flag, McDowell and the No. 34 Ford team are automatically qualified for the 16-driver, 10-race playoffs in the fall.

And at least some of his competitors acknowledged he earned the win. Of course, winning any NASCAR race — and especially one as prestigious and challenging as the Daytona 500 — takes a little bit of luck, like McDowell had in avoiding the massive, 16-car wreck on Lap 14.

But as Hamlin — who dominated with a race-high 98 laps led before finishing fifth — noted, McDowell’s win “was no fluke,” considering some of his success on superspeedways, particularly Daytona’s 2.5-mile oval. Logano congratulated him too.

Disappointment from finishing second aside, Elliott also credited McDowell for grinding forward, especially when he’s behind the wheel of a car that can seldom compete with the powerhouse teams.

“He certainly has stuck around over the years and battled hard through the course of his career,” Elliott said. “You can’t help but respect the fact that he’s still pushing and trying to have success here at this level. Yeah, I respect it. I’m happy for him, and I hope he enjoys it.”

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