Tag: Front Row Motorsports

McDowell ‘heartbroken’ after crashing out from Talladega lead

Michael McDowell was “heartbroken” leaving Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway empty-handed after leading the field off Turn 4 on the final lap. McDowell spun and crashed in the tri-oval off the front bumper of Brad Keselowski coming to the …

Michael McDowell was “heartbroken” leaving Sunday’s race at Talladega Superspeedway empty-handed after leading the field off Turn 4 on the final lap.

McDowell spun and crashed in the tri-oval off the front bumper of Brad Keselowski coming to the checkered flag. After blocking Keselowski’s run to the outside off Turn 4, the Front Row Motorsports driver went for the second block when the No. 6 dove back to the left toward the yellow line. It was a little too late, and Keselowski got into the back of McDowell, which triggered a multi-car wreck after McDowell spun across the track in front of the field.

Tyler Reddick missed the spinning No. 34 and passed the No. 6 for the race win. Keselowski finished second. McDowell’s damaged car, with its front end torn off, came to rest in the grass yards from the finish line, and he was credited with finishing 31st.

“Just heartbroken, man,” McDowell said. “I pull down a little bit sooner and we win the race. But that’s racing and it’s tough to get to victory lane, and we were close. We’ll be motivated by it. I’m a student of the game; I’m going to go back and watch and study and learn and figure out what I could have done differently and better, and work with my spotter and try to figure it out.

“But I’m super disappointed. I hate that other people that got caught up in my mess. I’m proud of our effort, our speed and our race team. We’ll see what happens.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1428]

McDowell thought he was going to be clear when pulling down in front of Keselowski, and in the moment didn’t think it was a late block. It was not an “all or nothing” moment for him coming to the checkered flag, and he had no intention of starting a wreck. Keselowski “barely” made contact to send McDowell spinning.

“I hate it because we had a good chance of getting a Dark Horse Mustang in victory lane; we definitely had the speed,” McDowell said. “But on the flip side of that, it’s the last lap at Talladega and you’re going for a win, and so I’ll learn from it, go back and watch it, and see what I could have done differently and better. But Brad’s a tough guy to beat here. He knows what to do on the last lap; he’s won [six] times here, and he did everything right.

“He drug off me, drug back and I drug back to him to try to make sure he didn’t have too big of a run, and then he got connected there with [Gragson] and just surged right before I pulled down. You’re dealing with inches the whole time, and I miscalculated. I apologize to Brad and everybody that was behind that got collected in that. It’s unfortunate. We had such a fast Love’s Travel Stop Ford Mustang. I’m proud of everybody at Front Row. We had so much speed, having both cars up there and controlling the race. We needed a win, and we were going for it.”

McDowell started from the pole in the GEICO 500 and led a race-high 36 laps.

McDowell and FRM are fast, so now it’s about finding consistency

Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports have had a fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse early in the NASCAR Cup Series season, but they’re still working to put together consistent performances and results. “I think the speed has been great; I think our …

Michael McDowell and Front Row Motorsports have had a fast Ford Mustang Dark Horse early in the NASCAR Cup Series season, but they’re still working to put together consistent performances and results.

“I think the speed has been great; I think our execution just hasn’t been very good,” McDowell said at Phoenix Raceway. “And that’s on me. Last week we didn’t execute well, [but] less on me last week. The good news is we have speed, and speed makes up for a lot of things. We’ve just got to keep that speed up throughout the year and then clean up some of the things that we’ve had troubles with and I think we’ll be in a good spot to contend for wins.”

No team wants to be searching for speed. It’s far easier to be fighting for finishes.

McDowell has started no worse than 12th in the first three races. After earning a front-row starting spot in the Daytona 500, McDowell earned his first career pole at Atlanta Motor Speedway. An eighth-place finish at Atlanta is his best finish of the season; his average finish is 23rd going into Sunday’s race in his home state.

“I think that’s the good thing — we’re pretty close with everything,” McDowell said. “We just have a few little areas to clean up and I think we’ll be able to put ourselves in a better position, especially as we get into the summer months.”

The 39-year-old McDowell is amid a career breakout. Since NASCAR introduced its Next Gen car in 2022, McDowell has enjoyed career numbers by quickly adapting to its feel and driving characteristics. He’s earned 21 top-10 finishes driving the Next Gen car, which is more than he had in his previous 14 seasons as a Cup Series driver (17).

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1428]

Front Row Motorsports is primed for even more success going forward with a new alliance with Team Penske. The technical partnership gives the small organization access to more information, like engineering support, but McDowell stressed it will take time for that to truly show results.

“Being able to lean on them more on that technical side for sure will help us to make better game day decisions and changes,” he said. “But all that, like I’ve been talking about, is going to take a process of being able to go through the information, understand it and then apply it, obviously. It’s still early, but I feel like…this week we made really big gains at home, at the shop, on how well we were able to utilize the information. We’re making gains, and I think it’ll get better and better every week.”

The next step for McDowell is turning their existing speed into top-five speed. It’s there where wins will come.

“Somewhere you’re going to get it right, you’re going to execute, get it all right, and you’re going to win a race,” McDowell said. “And winning a race, there’s such an emphasis on that in our series because it gets you in the playoffs and all the things it does. So, for me, it’s more about having those days of top-five speed than it is having top-15 speed throughout the entire year, if that makes sense.

“I think they go together, for sure, but I think just having more of that top-five speed is what’s going to allow us to contend for more wins.

Gilliland confident Front Row will have more performance to show as season progresses

Todd Gilliland believes the speed his Front Row Motorsports team has shown the first few weeks of the NASCAR season is a sign of things to come regardless of the racetrack. “I think we have a lot of new exciting partnerships, whether it’s the Tier 1 …

Todd Gilliland believes the speed his Front Row Motorsports team has shown the first few weeks of the NASCAR season is a sign of things to come regardless of the racetrack.

“I think we have a lot of new exciting partnerships, whether it’s the Tier 1 program with Ford or our new alliance with Team Penske,” Gilliland said this week. “I think all of that stuff has been helping us, pointing our team in the right direction to make these decisions, but at the same time, I think it’s even past the speed of it. It’s the speed plus how good my car drove, even at Daytona.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1428]

Gilliland not only led laps but could put his No. 38 Ford in front of different lanes and take pushes in the Daytona 500. He led 16 laps but finished 35th after being involved in the lap 191 multi-car crash.

A week later, Gilliland started a career-best fourth at Atlanta Motor Speedway and was the class of the field. Gilliland led a race-high 58 laps. Again, however, the finish (26th place) did not indicate the team’s performance and speed, as Gilliland was caught in an incident that damaged the car.

In the past, Gilliland’s team had to pick between either having a car that drove well or had speed. In the first two weeks of the 2024 season, the No. 38 Ford Mustang Dark Horse has had both.

“Let’s say we wanted to go qualify really well at Atlanta — we would probably have had to give up quite a bit of handling, so, to me, there’s more layers to it,” Gilliland said. “I’m hopeful that we’re going to show more speed here at (Las) Vegas, but on the same foot, I think we finished 28th and 31st there last year, so we have tons to improve on. But I’m really excited and very hopeful that this weekend will at least be a couple of steps in the right direction.”

The speed, specifically, is “like I’ve never had before in the Cup Series,” said Gilliland. With 74 laps led through the first two weeks, Gilliland has already set a new single-season mark for himself. He didn’t lead a single lap in 2023.

Front Row Motorsports teammates Todd Gilliland (left) and Michael McDowell are liking what they’ve been seeing this year. Motorsport Images

Gilliland and teammate Michael McDowell ran at the front in the Daytona 500 and Atlanta. For the 23-year-old Gilliland, now in his third year as a Cup Series driver, running at the front with some of the best in the series has been “awesome.”

“As still a youngerish guy that is still trying to find my way and make a name for myself, racing against the best of the best is just a huge confidence booster for myself,” Gilliland said. “I think I can do it and expect to be able to run well in those positions, but you never know what the other guys or the industry is going to think of yourself when you’re up there.

“So, for me, it’s been really awesome, just have to put those experiences in the memory bank. This is a huge confidence sport.”

The 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway is the season’s first intermediate racetrack, making it the first chance for Cup Series teams to get an idea of where they stack up. Will Gilliland and the Fords be just as fast when not on a superspeedway? Gilliland will need to draw on all the confidence he has in his car and team to hold it nearly wide-open right from the start of the race.

“I really think the expectation of our team this year, even if it’s through the first two races, we’ve seen the potential of what we can do at these types of racetracks, and that needs to be the expectation going forward,” Gilliland said. “It’s confidence-inducing for me as well as my whole team.”

McDowell earns first Cup pole, alongside Logano again in Atlanta

Michael McDowell and Joey Logano have flip-flopped starting positions from a week ago with McDowell earning his first career NASCAR Cup Series pole Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway. The Front Row Motorsports driver went to the top of the …

Michael McDowell and Joey Logano have flip-flopped starting positions from a week ago with McDowell earning his first career NASCAR Cup Series pole Saturday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

The Front Row Motorsports driver went to the top of the leaderboard in single-car qualifying at 178.844mph (30.999s). He was the final competitor to get on track in the final round of qualifying after setting the pace in the first round.

McDowell’s first pole comes in his 467th start.

“That’s awesome,” McDowell said. “I’m just really proud of all the men and women at Front Row Motorsports — two weeks in a row we’ve sat on the front row. We’ve got a really fast Benebone Ford Mustang. That was a good lap but it really comes down to team and execution and they’ve done a really good job.

“We need to back that up with a good result tomorrow, but I’m really proud of everybody at Front Row. It’s a big effort for us; got both cars in the top five, which is awesome.”

[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1428]

Logano, who bested McDowell last weekend for the pole in the Daytona 500, will start second and is the defending race winner at Atlanta. His fastest lap was 178.424mph

Kyle Busch qualified third (178.235mph), Todd Gilliland fourth (178.080mph), Kyle Larson fifth (177.829mph), Ryan Blaney sixth (177.658mph) and Chris Buescher seventh (177.176mph).

Austin Cindric qualified eighth (177.147mph), Chase Briscoe ninth (177.125mph) and Austin Dillon completed the top 10 (177.102mph).

There were seven Ford drivers who advanced into the final round of qualifying. The other three drivers were from the Chevrolet camp.

Daytona 500 champion William Byron qualified 11th with a lap of 176.853mph.

There are 37 drivers qualified for the Ambetter 400. Erik Jones ended up last at 164.554mph after fighting to keep the car from spinning in Turns 3 and 4 in the first round of qualifying.

Saturday’s session was the only on-track activity for the Cup Series prior to the green flag just after 3 p.m. ET Sunday.

RESULTS

Front Row Motorsports increases Ford partnership to Tier 1 program in 2024

Front Row Motorsports announced on Thursday morning that it has increased its partnership with Ford to a Tier 1 program.

[autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] locked a front-row starting position at the 2024 Daytona 500 with Michael McDowell on Wednesday night; however, it may not be the best news of the week. On Thursday morning, Front Row Motorsports announced a multi-year extension with Ford, including a technical alliance with Team Penske and a jump to Tier 1 status.

Front Row Motorsports will now collaborate with Team Penske on engineering, aerodynamics, race setup, strategy, pit crew development, and other projects. In other words, the jump to a Tier 1 program will significantly increase the possibility of Front Row Motorsports being competitive in 2024 and the coming years.

This is a massive day for Front Row Motorsports. McDowell and Todd Gilliland ran well in 2023, including a win for the No. 34 team at the Indianapolis Road Course. Now, Front Row Motorsports will have the resources to become a consistent, winning team in the NASCAR Cup Series, an organization’s dream come true.

[lawrence-related id=6027]

Front Row Motorsports signs B’laster as a primary sponsor in 2024

Front Row Motorsports signs B’laster as a primary sponsor for Michael McDowell in 2024. Check out McDowell’s new paint scheme and schedule!

[autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] has been a popular organization for releasing paint schemes and sponsor schedules for the 2024 season. This continued following the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum. On Tuesday morning, Front Row Motorsports announced that it has signed B’laster as a primary sponsor during the 2024 NASCAR season.

B’laster will sponsor [autotag]Michael McDowell[/autotag] and the No. 34 team in a multi-race agreement. McDowell will run the company’s colors at Pocono Raceway on July 14 and continue into the fall months of the 2024 season. As of now, Pocono is the only announced race for B’laster; however, it will feature select brands from the company’s portfolio later in the year.

This will be B’laster’s debut for the 2024 NASCAR season, and McDowell is a great choice. Despite a 19th-place finish at the Busch Light Clash due to a wreck, the No. 34 team has made strides in the right direction. McDowell is currently in his driver’s prime, winning at least one race in two of the last three years. Now, B’laster hopes it will be on one of those winning entries.

[lawrence-related id=6027]

Front Row Motorsports reveals sponsor details for Love’s RV in 2024

Front Row Motorsports has revealed the sponsorship details for Love’s RV during the 2024 season with Layne Riggs and Michael McDowell.

Love’s RV will return to [autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] during the 2024 NASCAR season and sponsor two drivers. In 2024, Love’s RV will sponsor Michael McDowell and the No. 34 Cup team in 18 races, while Layne Riggs and the No. 38 Truck team will have 11 events. The company has a multi-year contract with Front Row Motorsports.

McDowell brought Love’s RV to victory lane in NASCAR’s biggest event when he won the 2021 Daytona 500. As for Riggs, this is the first time the company will sponsor him as he joins Front Row Motorsports. Love’s RV was a partner for Zane Smith when he was in the No. 38 truck before moving to Spire Motorsports in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Front Row Motorsports has grown over the last three years with a Daytona 500 victory, a Truck Series championship, and more. Love’s RV hopes to return to victory lane with McDowell and Riggs during the 2024 NASCAR season. With everything going in the right direction for Front Row Motorsports, that could be a realistic opportunity for them.

[lawrence-related id=6027]

Front Row Motorsports’ 2024 NASCAR Cup Series season preview

Front Row Motorsports enters the 2024 NASCAR season looking for more victories. Here, you can check out Front Row’s 2024 season preview!

[autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] entered the 2023 NASCAR season with gradual steps in the right direction over the previous two years. Michael McDowell won the 2021 Daytona 500 and ran very well with the NextGen car in 2022. The 2023 season was an overall success as McDowell entered victory lane, and Todd Gilliland showed more flashes in his second year.

Now, the NASCAR organization is looking forward to what could be a big 2024 season. Front Row Motorsports has a new technical alliance with Team Penske, and its driver lineup is back for a third year. Could this be the campaign that Front Row Motorsports takes a step toward higher contention? That could be the case.

Front Row Motorsports signs Margaritaville at Sea as a partner in 2024

Front Row Motorsports signs Margaritaville at Sea as a partner in 2024. Find out when the company will be on track with Michael McDowell!

[autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] had a successful 2023 NASCAR season with wins by Michael McDowell in the Cup Series and Zane Smith in the Truck Series. In fact, McDowell’s victory at the Indianapolis Road Course marked Front Row Motorsports’ first win on a non-superspeedway track. Now, the organization is winning again with a very notable sponsorship announcement.

Last week, Front Row Motorsports announced that Margaritaville at Sea will sponsor McDowell at the Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum on February 4 in Los Angeles, California. The paint scheme on the No. 34 car will celebrate the launch of a new ship in the Margaritaville at Sea cruise fleet, called The Islander.

No other races have been announced for Margaritaville at Sea and Front Row Motorsports, but it’s still notable that McDowell has attracted the company’s attention. Going into 2024, the No. 34 team is looking to build upon its success in 2023, and earn the team’s first win on a non-superspeedway oval. McDowell has the momentum to make it happen, starting in Los Angeles.

[lawrence-related id=5671]

Kaz Grala to drive No. 36 car for Front Row Motorsports in 2024 Daytona 500

Front Row Motorsports announced on Tuesday morning that Kaz Grala will drive the No. 36 car for the organization in the 2024 Daytona 500.

[autotag]Kaz Grala[/autotag] will drive most of the 2024 NASCAR season with Rick Ware Racing in the Cup Series; however, he has picked up a race with another Ford-backed organization. On Tuesday morning, [autotag]Front Row Motorsports[/autotag] announced that Grala will attempt the 2024 Daytona 500 in the No. 36 car, an open entry, alongside Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland.

The 25-year-old driver will run 25 races for Rick Ware Racing and at least one for Front Row Motorsports. Whether Grala will have any more races with the organization in 2024 remains unclear. As for Front Row Motorsports, a third part-time entry isn’t new to them. In 2023, Riley Herbst competed in three superspeedway races with the No. 36 team.

This is a good move for Front Row Motorsports, as Grala has experience in an open entry for the Daytona 500. It will be interesting to see if he earns any more starts, but it depends on his schedule with Rick Ware Racing. For now, Grala will focus on his Daytona 500 efforts as he looks to make the Great American Race for the third straight year.

[lawrence-related id=5671]