Something out of the ordinary happened during the 2024 Daytona Summer race. Michael McDowell and Todd Gilliland, both drivers from Front Row Motorsports, qualified to start the superspeedway race 1-2. Weeks later, McDowell has once again qualified to start the playoff-opening Atlanta race in pole position this Sunday. This trend has put a key transformation from the team on full display.
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Just a few years back, fans would’ve joked about the idea of a Front Row Motorsports car starting from pole position. That’s not the case anymore. The team has four pole starts in just this season. Wins, top-5s, and top-10s are coming by more often now as well. What made this possible? McDowell reflected on it this Saturday after setting the quickest speeds in Atlanta.
“I promise you we’re not spending the most and we don’t have the most people, but we have a great group of men and women who fight really hard and this Next Gen car has given us the platform to do what we’re doing. Without that, it would have been a really tough road, but from that point forward we’ve been in the game and I think we’ve done a good job of trying to stay in the game,” McDowell elaborated in a press conference.
The seventh-generation Cup Series car was created to enforce parity across the field. What the program’s success did was provide humble teams with low resources such as Front Row the opportunity to fight back against sharks like Joe Gibbs Racing and Hendrick Motorsports. And the people at McDowell’s camp are making sure to take full advantage of that opportunity.
McDowell wants to win a race before quitting FRM at the end of the season
The 39-year-old driver will be leaving Front Row at the end of the ongoing season to join Spire Motorsports. Not being emotional about the break of a seven-year association is not an easy task. That is why McDowell has been forcing himself to lay off the waterworks till the season finale in Phoenix.
Moreover, his job with the team isn’t done yet. He said, “The playoffs are happening and I’ve just redirected that focus on winning a race before the season is over, so I haven’t really allowed myself to get to that place yet. It’s gonna be tough. There’s no doubt about it.”
He continued to express that he would have a hard time coping with the departure despite not having any regrets about it. “They have a great program and great drivers coming into it, but I’ll wait until Phoenix to really start thinking about it,” he concluded.
It remains to be seen what can McDowell build on from pole as NASCAR goes live this Sunday with the first postseason event.
