MCDOWELL WINS DAYTONA POLE AS FRONT ROW SWEEPS FRONT ROW
- Michael McDowell won the pole for tomorrow’s Coke Zero Sugar 400.
- The pole is McDowell’s fourth of his career and fourth this season.
- Todd Gilliland made it an all Front Row Motorsports front row as he qualified second.
- Overall, seven Ford drivers qualified in the top 10.
Ford Performance Results:
1st – Michael McDowell
2nd – Todd Gilliland
3rd – Joey Logano
4th – Ryan Preece
5th – Josh Berry
6th – Chase Briscoe
8th – Austin Cindric
12th – Brad Keselowski
13th – Chris Buescher
14th – Ryan Blaney
15th – Noah Gragson
20th – Harrison Burton
33rd – Cody Ware
36th – Justin Haley
POLE-WINNING PRESS CONFERENCE
MICHAEL MCDOWELL, No. 34 Long John Silver’s Ford Mustang Dark Horse
WHAT GIVES? “It’s a funny story, actually. So, qualifying has never been a strength for us at superspeedways, but we’ve always raced really well, and so we always though, ‘Ah, it takes so much time and energy to get all these little, small details just perfect to go out there and beat fenders side-by-side, three-wide and is it worth all the effort.’ And so we just decided, ‘OK, we are going to take as much time as we possibly have available to execute everything that we can to the best of our ability and really focus on taking our time and trying to do every detail perfect.’ And it was kind of an inside joke at the shop or just one of those jokes of like, ‘Hey, if we go to Daytona for the Daytona 500 and we qualify 18th, we are never, ever putting this much time and energy into another race car again.’ I mean, it was just a massive amount of time and energy by everybody at Front Row. We came down here and we qualified second and we all looked at each other like, ‘Oh, you know what this means? It means we’ve got to do this every single time.’ We set the bar high for ourselves, so that just moved the bar internally and so when we went to Atlanta and sat on the pole, I mean, obviously, it’s the superspeedway package, but it’s not like Daytona and Talladega where it’s just easy flat, like we saw guys hit the wall and spin out in qualifying, so it’s not exactly the same, but we sat on the pole there, and then sort of knew going to Talladega that if we did everything well and found those fine little details that we’d have a shot at it. That’s the long story of it. Kind of shortened up, we just kind of proved to ourselves that with a lot of extra, and when I say a lot I mean a lot of extra time that it matters and we just put that time in and it’s paid off.”
ON POSSIBLY RACING HIS TEAMMATE FOR A WIN TOMORROW NIGHT WITH BOTH NEEDING TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS. “We haven’t gotten to the last lap and been nose-to-tail and had a shot at trying to win the race together, but from my standpoint is the best thing that we can do for our team and for ourselves is to work together because we have fast cars and if we can work together, and we’ve seen guys do it well. The 6 and the 17 here last year did a great job and I think if it wasn’t Chris Buescher leading that race in front of Brad, Brad would have drove that race much different that last lap. He did give himself a chance to win, but didn’t ever put Chris in a situation where he wasn’t going to, if that makes sense. And I think that’s what it comes down to. I don’t want to take away a win from Todd. I want to win myself tomorrow night, but if we’re in that situation, you have to play it out to where is my move gonna hurt both of us or is it gonna help one of us, or both of us. So, you don’t know until you’re in that situation and we haven’t been there yet to know on that last lap coming off of turn four what we would do, but it really is situational just like anything else. Hopefully, we’re in that spot. Hopefully, we can get to the last few laps of these races and put ourselves in position because as you guys know so much can happen in this race in particular. There’s a lot that can happen, so hopefully we get to that point to feel and see what we would do.”
DID YOU COME INTO THE TUNNEL FEELING EXCITED, ANXIOUS? “I come here excited. That’s really what helped me change my perspective and I think become a better superspeedway racer is coming from a road course background in road racing, superspeedway racing is its own thing. It’s different than anything else that we do or anything else that you’ve ever done in your career getting to this point. I remember the first superspeedway race I did we were four-wide on the backstraight at Talladega and I was running probably 25th and I was like, ‘This is the dumbest thing ever. What are we doing?’ You can’t go anywhere. You’re locked in the middle. I mean, one guy makes one wrong move and we’re all piled up in a ball. Like, ‘This is not racing.’ That’s kind of my first year and so once I’ve learned to embrace it and enjoy it and become a student of it, it’s really helped me, and so now I come here optimistic and when I drive through the tunnel I think we have a better shot than most to win this race, and I know everybody has a shot, but at the same time if you just look, forget about the win here, just top 10s, I don’t even know what the number is, but double digit top 10s here and that doesn’t just happen by happenstance. I feel like for whatever reason this place has been good to me in that sense of feeling the pack, feeling when things are gonna happen, putting yourself in a good position. Dale Jr. always talks about, ‘Hey, you’re not gonna win every single one of these, but you need to be in that picture.’ You know, that picture they snap over the start-finish line as everybody is coming across the line three-wide and half sideways, and I’ve been in a lot of those pictures. If we continue to do that, no different than 2021, we’ll have a shot at winning the race. As you guys saw at Talladega, obviously we had a shot at winning the race and just wasn’t able to make the right move there at the end and put myself in a bad spot, so if we keep putting ourselves in that position to win, we’ll get one.”
DO YOU CARRY THAT WEIGHT OF EXPECTATION AND PRESSURE? “For sure. Every week you feel the pressure, but there are some weeks more than others. Road courses, superspeedways, we feel that more – that if we don’t win or don’t put ourselves in position to win then it’s a missed opportunity, but at the same time I’ve been doing it long enough to know that you can’t control everything and you can’t prepare for every scenario and sometimes you get it wrong. I think Talladega I did everything right until I didn’t. The move that I did wrong was a big wrong and so you learn from those things and you adjust and you make a game plan for the next situation, but the next situation is completely different. It’s a constant learning and growing process, especially here at superspeedways.”
YOU HAVE FOUR POLES THIS YEAR AFTER NOT HAVING ONE FOR YOUR FIRST 17 YEARS. HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN IT THIS YEAR? “It’s so many things, but for superspeedways in particular it’s just speed. The driver, yes, I have – if I was gonna give you a percentage I would say the driver is 10 percent qualifying and the car is 90 percent. You’ve got to hit your marks. You’ve got to hit your shifts just right, which it’s come down to 10 rpms. You get a report and if you’re 10 or 15 rpms off, they’re like, ‘Hey, you missed it.’ But it’s all about speed and we’ve had a lot of speed in our cars. Now, Gateway was different for sure. That’s not a superspeedway and we got the pole there. I don’t know what the stats are, but this year I think 10-12 times we’ve made it to the second round in qualifying and not just superspeedways but everywhere, so more than anything our cars just have speed. Having speed is important and then the level of execution that it takes not with only 20 minutes of practice. I think the time I put in during the week studying and preparing has allowed us to unload really quick and put in a solid lap for qualifying, so that’s been fun. It’s different than in years past, the other 16 years, where you had three hours of practice and completely different car, gear, sometimes engines. I’ve been around long enough to where we changed engines between qualifying, so everything has changed so much that it comes down to execution and I think we’ve done a good job with that.”
HAS THE PENSKE ALLIANCE HELPED WITH THAT? “Yes. I think that anytime that you’re able to share resources, especially with an organization like Team Penske is huge. I don’t know if it’s led to our qualifying success, but I do feel like our relationship with Ford Performance and having more tools and having more resources in general has definitely helped the speed at Front Row and that obviously plays into it. It’s been tricky here the last couple months, but we’re still managing to make speed and make it happen.”
ARE YOU ABLE TO LOOK AT IT AND NOT THINK, ‘WHAT ARE WE DOING?’ “As crazy as it sounds, you don’t really think about it. I mean, obviously you want to keep the cars on the ground. I know it’s a big goal. It’s not the worst thing on the planet when they roll. I hate to say it like that. I don’t want that to be taken out of context because we want to keep the cars on the ground, but sometimes it dissipates energy and speed as it’s rolling rather than hitting something hard. I’m not technical enough to go into what’s better, but like Corey’s last week was not super scary for me because of the way that it went up and came down. It was kind of a soft roll. I know it probably didn’t feel soft for him, but it didn’t fly. It just went up and over, so I think the car did a pretty good job with all the things that are there to keep it from flying, but at Daytona here they’ve obviously paved the back straightaway, which is different from what Ryan Preece had last year when he came across the 24 Hour bus stop and then across the grass and it kind of dug in, and if you see too, like even at Michigan everything was soft until they hit the grass and it dug in, but at the same time, when you’re on the asphalt he would have skid for a long, long time, so there’s a balance there, too. It doesn’t really worry me. It doesn’t scare me. I feel like these cars are really safe, and I think drivers just have this ability to block that all out. You’re usually not worried about it until you’re in it, and usually even that’s delayed. Like, I’ve been in some bad ones where you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah. This is gonna hurt.’ And all of a sudden you realize this is gonna hurt, but you don’t think about it until you’re in it.”
WILL YOU FEEL THE RIGHT SIDE AIR DEFLECTOR THAT HAS BEEN ADDED? “With how late that change came, I think there was very little information to the teams as far as what this is gonna do balance-wise and all that. We got a tiny little bit of information, but even that in a wind tunnel by itself isn’t a real indicator of what it will be like in the pack. I don’t think anybody knows. I think everybody is taking their best guesses, but I don’t think it’s gonna be terribly different, but there might be some positives from it, too. We’ll see how the cars suck up. Every situation is different and that’s what’s hard about superspeedway racing as rules packages change. Sometimes you’re three-wide in the middle and the car responds like this and sometimes you’re three-wide in the middle, but a car two car lengths off of you and all of a sudden you get something completely new and you’re like, ‘Whoa, where did that come from?’ And you can see that as a fan and as a spectator. When guys are caught off guard or just lose it, it’s because there is a situation that they haven’t been in before, so with this deflector I’m sure there will be some of that, of figuring out does it do something unique in a certain area, whether that’s middle, top, bottom, behind a car, in front of a car, but I don’t think it’s gonna be a huge change.”
WERE YOU GLAD THEY MADE THE CHANGE? “Honestly, I didn’t think much of it other than they said that this helps the take off speed, so obviously with last week they’re worried that we’re close to that 200 number, which we are when we’re pushing hard and sucked up tight. Most of the time we’re 180s and we’re well under that, but when you get those massive runs and those big trains coming you can get there, so I think it’s just precaution. That’s probably the best way to describe it. I think they just took an extra measure of, ‘Hey, let’s be on the good side of this just in case.’”
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THIS SUCCESS KNOWING YOU ARE MOVING ON NEXT YEAR? “I think you never take it for granted. We come down here this weekend knowing that we’re gonna have a shot at the pole, and you’re gonna start over next year and you’re gonna have to build to that and you don’t know that. So, driving down here and just thinking about it like, yeah, you put it in perspective of tomorrow is not guaranteed and success is not guaranteed as you guys have seen my career. I’ve spent a lot of it having very little success, so I think it’s more of enjoying the process in the moment and I’m thankful that our cars have been good and we’ve had some strong runs. If anything, I’m disappointed about this season because I think we’ve been faster and ran better than we’ve shown from a points standpoint and winning races because just with mistakes and some of those on me and some of those that we’ve just had, which you have throughout the year. I felt like Atlanta was a race that we could have won, and Talladega obviously was a race that we put ourselves in position to win. And there have been a handful of others that have just gotten away from us, so that’s a little bit disappointing on the last year because I so badly want to win and get us locked in the playoffs and looking at the playoffs with the way that the rounds are set up and the tracks that are in it. There are a lot of high expectations, but you’ve got to get there and we haven’t gotten there. Now, I feel like we’re in that last two weeks and we’ve got to make it happen. This is the first step to making it happen. There’s a good chance I could be sitting here with you tomorrow night and we’re talking about being in the playoffs and having Watkins Glen in there. You go through the rounds and all of a sudden this conversation changes, but it’s racing and we’ve seen the highs and lows of it and I’ve been a part of the highs and lows of it, so you just don’t take it for granted. You enjoy the moment and the process and in two weeks we’ll know.”
DO YOU HAVE THE AIR JACK SYSTEM ON YOUR CAR? “No.”
DO YOU THINK THE EXTRA WEIGHT MIGHT GIVE AN ADVANTAGE WITH DOWNFORCE? “Yes and no. I think weight always matters, so you’re always trying to do as much as you can and you don’t want to put anything on your car that is heavy or unnecessary, but, for us, more than anything is this is kind of the approach that we take. We’ll let the big teams figure it out and spend the money first and if they think it’s good, then we’ll add it. That’s the nice thing about it not being mandatory. Yes, it would be unfortunate if you’re sitting on four flat tires and you can’t get back to the pits, but as you guys know, if that happens, you’re pretty much done anyways. Even if you come out there and they jack you up and you drive back, you’re still a lap or two down, so the probability of that being something that you need and it actually be effective, we would rather watch and see if it’s effective for other people first, and I think that’s probably why you saw teams split it, too. They’re doing the same process, but just doing it internally.”
TODD GILLILAND, No. 38 Grillo’s Pickles Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Like we talked about before that second round, it’s just an amazing effort by everyone at Front Row Motorsports. I think it was in Atlanta where we were fairly close to getting the front row, so to come back here we’ve had super fast cars at every superspeedway this year, so just to be able to keep cranking them out like that has been really impressive. Johnny, Ryan, my crew chief, everybody on our car has stepped it up a lot. Michael is a tough one to beat. He’s been pushing us to new levels since I got to the Cup Series and we continue to do that. Second isn’t too bad and we’ll be on the front row and race him from there.”
JOSH BERRY, No. 4 eero Ford Mustang Dark Horse – “Everybody back at Stewart-Haas Racing and the 4 team, all four teams did a really good job. We definitely improved a lot from what we had here in February but as well as at Talladega, so that’s exciting. Everybody has been digging hard. The Fords as a whole have a lot of speed. We have a lot of cars up front and hopefully we can stay up there tomorrow night.”
IT’S A CHANCE TO MAKE THE PLAYOFFS TOMORROW WITH A WIN. “For sure. Every week is a chance and that’s all you can ask for. I think tomorrow is gonna be wild, but we just need to execute and obviously stay out of trouble. We need to be there when it counts and give ourselves an opportunity. That’s all we can do and if it doesn’t happen tomorrow night, we’ll try like hell next week.”
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