Michael McDowell is a driver for Front Row Motorsports (FRM), a team currently embroiled in an antitrust lawsuit against NASCAR. This can be a major distraction and no one would blame him if it affected his on-track performance. But the No. 34 driver has got his focus as sharp as always. His pole position start in Talladega proves that. It is his fifth straight superspeedway pole start in a row and it is Kyle Larson who is a big reason for this heightened performance.
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McDowell is not a part of the ongoing playoffs and hasn’t won a race throughout the season either. However, he has been fantastic in qualifying. On Saturday, he won his sixth pole position of the season and his second at Talladega. A few of the other tracks where he has been at the front during the start are Daytona, Atlanta, and the World Wide Technology Raceway. The veteran’s goal is to have the most pole positions by the end of the season and his main rival in this is Larson, who has won five pole positions so far.
“We want to beat Kyle Larson for the most amount of poles in the year,” McDowell explained in a recent media interaction. “That’s a big goal for us and I think right now we’re ahead. He’s got great racetracks coming up. I think he’s probably got more opportunities to get poles from here on out than I do, but he’s gonna have to execute perfect and that’s the kind of pressure we wanted to put on him.”
This will be his final year at Front Row Motorsports as he is set to join Spire Motorsports at the end of the season. The split seems to be a good-natured one after a seven-year association. Many look forward to seeing how well he performs as a part of an outfit that is growing to be one of NASCAR’s powerhouses.
Will FRM’s lawsuit affect McDowell’s performance on the track?
McDowell’s last season with Front Row Motorsports is filled with drama. The team is in a legal scuffle with the promotion and it doesn’t seem likely that it will back off. Such situations can affect team morale in the race shop and on the race track. But McDowell and his crew have chosen to not involve themselves in the fiasco.
“No concerns on it impacting performance,” the driver said. “All of that stuff is happening above my pay grade and my road crew guy’s pay grade. We just stay focused on the task in front of us, so it wasn’t much of a distraction from that standpoint. It’s the same thing, when you have a goal in front of you, it’s easy to stay focused.
McDowell is yet to convert any of his pole starts into a race win. Talladega being the unpredictable venue that it is, could potentially be where he secures his first win of the season.
