BRISTOL, Tenn. – Arguably the biggest surprise from Friday’s qualifying session for the Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was Michael McDowell, who put Front Row Motorsports in a top-10 starting spot for Sunday’s race.
McDowell impressed in all three knockout rounds, timing in 10th-fastest in each of the first two sessions before improving to ninth in the final round, posting a lap of 15.029 seconds (127.673 mph) in his No. 34 Love’s Travel Stops Ford.
The effort marks McDowell’s best starting spot of the year, his first appearance in the final round for Front Row Motorsports and his highest qualifying effort since Pocono (Pa.) Raceway in June of 2017, when he started 11th for Leavine Family Racing after also making the third round of qualifying.
McDowell said he learned some things from teammate David Ragan that aided him on Friday.
“Bristol is a tough place because everybody is so close, so to have three solid rounds like that is pretty awesome. I’m just really proud of everybody at Front Row Motorsports. Our Love’s Travel Stop Ford was pretty good in our mock runs, but David was really good … so I looked at his data and tried to figure out what he does that makes him go fast here and was able to learn some things that paid off for us.
“This is a really great effort for Love’s Travel Stops and Front Row Motorsports. I couldn’t be happier and hope we can keep it going for the rest of the weekend.”
After spending a large portion of his earlier career in NASCAR driving for start-and-park race teams, McDowell has built a reputation as a driver who gets the most out of what he has over the past four seasons and said he’s enjoying his place in the sport nowadays.
“It’s been fun being in it the last couple of years,” admitted McDowelll. “For so many years, I was just showing up and starting-and-parking, not getting to run all the laps, and to be in competitive cars and to be able to get speed out of them too has been a lot of fun the last couple years.”
Now the focus turns to Sunday for McDowell and the Front Row Motorsports team, as they look to capture their second top-10 finish of the season and the organization’s first at Bristol since Chris Buescher in August of 2016.
“It’s so hard to pass here and track position is so important,” noted McDowell. “Good pit selection always helps, but starting up front on a track like this really gets your race off to a good start. Now it’s just about making the best out of what we’ve got in our hands.
“If we’re in a position to grab some stage points we definitely want to try and do that … because for a smaller team like ours, every point matters.”
