(Photo: Nigel Kinrade Photography)
By Aaron Bearden

Main Takeaway

Two weeks ago, on his podcast “Actions Detrimental,” NASCAR Cup Series star Denny Hamlin made a bold prediction.

Chase Elliott would make the playoffs. And he would do so on points. 

The logic behind the claim was simple. Elliott had made it to the fringe of the playoff bubble and is among NASCAR’s best road course racers. Two of the final four regular season races were set to be held on road courses, so it stood to reason that there was time for Elliott to close the gap. 

There was just one issue. The driver on the bubble was Michael McDowell. 

McDowell and the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports team are in the midst of a career year. They don’t always have the collective speed of the sport’s top stars, but the gritty underdogs have established themselves as genuine playoff contenders with a consistent ability to capitalize on whatever pace they have. 

That’s been particularly true on road courses. McDowell had 114 points earned on road courses coming into Indianapolis Motor Speedway, trailing only Kyle Busch (116) among all Cup drivers. The 2021 Daytona 500 winner knew of his road course pace and called his shot on X when he saw Hamlin’s declaration. Hamlin told McDowell to prove him wrong. 

It’s safe to say he did. 

There were no flukes, gimmicks or surprises to McDowell’s impressive win in Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Brickyard. The No. 34 team brought early pace, qualified well and put together a complete race to score easily the most dominant of Front Row Motorsports’ four Cup victories. 

McDowell led 54 of 82 laps in a race that ran nearly entirely without cautions. He outlasted Elliott himself to take the win, adding Indianapolis Motor Speedway to a winning resume that also includes the Daytona 500. His team avoided mistakes when it counted – it was Daniel Suarez and Trackhouse Racing that cost themselves a chance to win with a slow stop.

The end result was a statement victory for a team that’s beaten the odds all year.

“I think it just shows how strong our team is,” McDowell said of Sunday’s win. “It’s one thing if you’re restarting sixth here on a green-white-checkered, you fire it in there and you steal a win. That’s not what we did today.

“What we did today is we had the fastest car and we won. I think it says a lot for our race team and what we have been able to do and what we’ve been able to build on.”

The victory may have come as a surprise to some onlookers. Front Row Motorsports had previously only won on superspeedways and in a weather-shortened trip to Pocono Raceway. But given the team’s consistent road course pace, McDowell felt this was more than an upset. 

“I think we’ve been the fastest road course car since this Next-Gen car over the average of it, and I think statistically it’ll show that,” McDowell said. “I think if you just look at the average finish and you look at average running position, we’ve been a top 5 car every single road course race since this Next-Gen car has come in.

“Is it a Cinderella story from a lot of different aspects? Maybe. But off of pure performance, like I feel like we’ve been nailing it and having a shot at it.” 

“To basically dominate the weekend is hardly a Cinderella story,” team general manager Jerry Freeze added. “We’ve been fortunate, this is the fourth Cup win that Front Row Motorsports has had, and I think you could say that the first three, circumstances kind of played their way into being in the position to get the checkered flag at the end, but this one was just a real butt kicking, and so I’m especially proud of this win.”

Getting the victory will allow the organization to focus heading into the playoffs. Front Row Motorsports announced earlier in the week that McDowell and Todd Gilliland would each be back in 2024. The No. 34 team had been focused on points heading into Indianapolis, looking to recover after a difficult stretch of races saw it fall below the cutline. They can now rest easy for the next two weeks knowing their spot in the Field of 16 is assured. 

“The goal is just to be close, and we were able to be close, and I think we were even disappointed with that because we had some better race cars than the finishes we had the last few weeks,” crew chief Travis Peterson said.

“It culminated in a lot of stress leading up to this point, but now that’s all relieved, and we can focus on trying to continue to build and have fast race cars the rest of the year.”

Good, Bad and Ugly

Good: Playoff desperation heats up

It’s on.

McDowell’s Sunday win took what had been a tense playoff race and blew it open, shifting the bubble to 15th-place Bubba Wallace. The two-time Cup winner now holds a 28-point advantage over Suarez for the last spot in the Field of 16. 

Both Wallace and Suarez still have something to race for on points as things stand. Wallace has traditionally struggled at road courses and gave up 30 points to the cutline in Indianapolis. Suarez’s lone win came at another road course, Sonoma Raceway, last year. The Mexican star was one slow stop from potentially winning Sunday. 

The duo and other winless playoff contenders have reason to be nervous over the final two weeks. 

There have been 13 different winners in the opening 24 Cup races. That leaves three playoff spots remaining on points. Former Cup champions Kevin Harvick (+145 points) and Brad Keselowski (+143) are well clear of the current cutline, while Wallace sits at risk from Suarez. 

None of the trio can afford to rest easy, though. McDowell’s win showed how precarious their position can be. Watkins Glen International could easily yield a new winner like Elliott, shifting the cutline again and putting Wallace and Suarez into a must-win position. 

The last race of the regular season is at Daytona International Speedway, where nearly anyone could conceivably make their way to victory lane. Each of the three winners at Daytona in the Next Gen era (Austin Cindric, Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse Jr.) have been winless outside of their Daytona wins in the past two years. 

If Suarez or Elliott can win at the Glen and a surprise victor emerges in Daytona, there’ll only be one spot on points for Harvick and Keselowski to fight for. 

 

Bad: Playoff hopefuls fall short

Elliott just needed one more spot. 

In a year where he’s missed seven races for injury and suspension, the 2020 Cup champ finds himself well below the playoff cutline and in need of a win with the playoffs just two weeks away. 

Indianapolis nearly provided the start Elliott needed. But he didn’t have the pace to chase down McDowell over the final 30 laps. Elliott had to settle for second after his best overall performance of the year. 

“Just needed just a little bit more and came up a bit short,” Elliott said. “But congrats to Michael (McDowell), man. He did a good job. Ran a great race and stayed mistake free, and that’s what you’ve got to do to win.” 

Suarez started the day on pole and seemed to have the pace to win, but an issue with the air hose led to a lengthy last pit stop, dropping Suarez too far behind to contend as the laps wound down. He was relegated to third as the checkered flag flew. 

“We win and we lose as a team, and that’s all I can say,” Suarez said. “The guys brought a very fast race car. I felt that maybe we were one adjustment behind in the first run with the back of the car, but then we made it a little bit better.

“But I felt like I was always one step behind the 9 and the 34, and then at the end, I felt that when my car came alive again, we had that issue.

“Just a little bit heartbreaking, but that’s part of the sport. All we can do is continue to push, continue to build race cars like this, and I’ll keep on winning races.” 

Ty Gibbs entered the day above the cutline by three points, but early contact from the returning Shane van Gisbergen led him to spin at the exit of Turn 1. Gibbs spent the whole day fighting to recover track position, finishing 12th. He now sits 49 points out and essentially in a must-win position to advance. 

Alex Bowman is in a similar spot to Elliott and came home fifth, providing a small sense of optimism that he could contend next week at Watkins Glen. Chase Briscoe finished just behind him in sixth. 

Each driver will pray that their odds fare better in another road course race this Sunday, lest their playoff hopes rest on a Hail Mary at Daytona. 

 

Good: International flair

Sunday’s race was filled to the brim with talent – many from outside of the traditional NASCAR ranks. 

All eyes were on Chicago street course winner Shane van Gisbergen, who returned with a strong 10th-place run in Indy. The three-time Supercars champ is planning a move to America next year to contest NASCAR full-time, with Trackhouse reportedly working to set up a program for him. Van Gisbergen also ran the Craftsman Truck Series race at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, finishing 19th in his oval debut. 

But van Gisbergen was far from the only interloper from another series. In fact, he wasn’t the only Supercars driver in the field. Championship leader Brodie Kostecki made a one-off run for Richard Childress Racing, marching up to 22nd in a back-up car. 

Sports car veteran Mike Rockenfeller came home 24th for Legacy Motor Club. He fared better than Andy Lally (30th) and Toyota ace Kamui Kobayashi, who ended the day 33rd after contact from Ricky Stenhouse Jr. 

Kobayashi wasn’t the only one to face Stenhouse’s wrath. Jenson Button went for a spin after an intense battle with the Daytona 500 winner. The 2009 Formula 1 champion was classified 28th at races end. 

There were drivers from seven countries in the race – the USA, Mexico (Suarez), New Zealand (van Gisbergen), Australia (Kostecki), Germany (Rockenfeller), England (Button) and Japan (Kobayashi). 

 

Good (Or Bad?): Clean and Green

Sunday’s race had an old-school feel to it. 

There was just one caution on the day – something the Cup Series hasn’t seen since 2012. The final 77 laps all ran caution-free, sitting among the longest green-flag runs in recent NASCAR history. That allowed the race to run from green to checkered in just a second under 2 hours and 10 minutes, the second quickest Cup race of the modern era. Only the 2017 race at Watkins Glen International ended faster. 

It was a far cry from the prior two Cup races on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, which both descended into borderline-farcical affairs filled with crashes. Aided by the lack of stage cautions and a strategic move of the restart zone to eliminate calamity in Turn 1, the Brickyard provided a race free from restarts that emphasized race-long execution from drivers and teams. 

Whether that’s good or bad depends on your preferred style of racing. But if you didn’t like it, I do have good news: NASCAR is expected to return to the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway next season. 

Notes

  • Ford has secured three-straight wins between RFK Racing and Front Row Motorsports. It’s the first time the Blue Ovals have done so without Team Penske or Stewart-Haas Racing since 2010-11. 
  • Sunday’s race was the second in three weeks to see the entire field finish. Not too shabby when you realize it’d been over four years since a Cup race was completed without a DNF beforehand. 
  • Martin Truex Jr. left Indianapolis with a 60-point lead on Denny Hamlin atop the standings. If he can avoid any issues, the 2017 Cup champ could clinch the regular season title this weekend at Watkins Glen. 
  • Joey Logano sure had a bad day, huh? The two-time champ was involved in the day’s only caution when he hit Haley and then he clobbered teammate Ryan Blaney from behind into Turn 1 on the ensuing restart. 
  • If Alex Bowman’s Indy top-five caught you be surprise, you aren’t alone. It was his first top-five since March. Hopefully a sign of things to come for the No. 48 team. 
  • Kyle Busch was running inside of the top-five and in the picture to contend for the win when something went afoul in his No. 8 Chevrolet. The two-time champ lacked straight-line speed and faded to 36th at race’s end. 
  • That was better than Aric Almirola, though. The Stewart-Haas Racing veteran was running 19th when he ran out of gas with two laps remaining, leaving him last as the checkered flag flew.

Race Results

  1. Michael McDowell
  2. Chase Elliott
  3. Daniel Suarez
  4. Tyler Reddick
  5. Alex Bowman
  6. Chase Briscoe
  7. Martin Truex Jr.
  8. Kyle Larson
  9. Christopher Bell
  10. Shane van Gisbergen
  11. Chris Buescher
  12. Ty Gibbs
  13. Ryan Blaney
  14. William Byron
  15. Austin Cindric
  16. Austin Dillon
  17. Ross Chastain
  18. Bubba Wallace
  19. Denny Hamlin
  20. Brad Keselowski
  21. Harrison Burton
  22. Brodie Kostecki
  23. Kevin Harvick
  24. Mike Rockenfeller
  25. Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  26. AJ Allmendinger
  27. Ty Dillon
  28. Jenson Button
  29. Corey LaJoie
  30. Andy Lally
  31. Ryan Preece
  32. Josh Bilicki
  33. Kamui Kobayashi
  34. Joey Logano
  35. Erik Jones
  36. Kyle Busch
  37. Todd Gilliland
  38. Justin Haley
  39. Aric Almirola

Stage 1

  1. Michael McDowell
  2. Daniel Suarez
  3. Chase Elliott
  4. Tyler Reddick
  5. Kyle larson
  6. Kyle Busch
  7. Christopher Bell
  8. Alex Bowman
  9. Shane van Gisbergen
  10. Martin Truex Jr,

Stage 2

  1. Denny Hamlin
  2. Michael McDowell
  3. Daniel Suarez
  4. Brad Keselowski
  5. Chase Elliott
  6. Kyle Busch
  7. Tyler Reddick
  8. Alex Bowman
  9. Chase Briscoe
  10. Kyle Larson

Playoff Picture

After weeks of intense points racing near the cutline, the bubble finally burst with McDowell’s win. Only Wallace and Suarez have a realistic chance at advancing, though issues for both drivers at the Glen could help Gibbs get into the mix. 

In With A Win

  • William Byron (4)
  • Martin Truex Jr. (3)
  • Kyle Busch (3)
  • Denny Hamlin (2)
  • Kyle Larson (2)
  • Chris Buescher (2)
  • Ross Chastain
  • Christopher Bell
  • Ryan Blaney
  • Joey Logano
  • Tyler Reddick
  • Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
  • Michael McDowell

Above the Cut

  • Kevin Harvick (+145)
  • Brad Keselowski (+143)
  • Bubba Wallace (+28)

Within Reach

  • Daniel Suarez (-28)
  • Ty Gibbs (-49)

Need to Win

  • Chase Elliott
  • Alex Bowman
  • AJ Allmendinger
  • Austin Cindric
  • Justin Haley
  • Aric Almirola
  • Ryan Preece
  • Corey LaJoie
  • Todd Gilliland
  • Erik Jones
  • Austin Dillon
  • Harrison Burton
  • Chase Briscoe
  • Ty Dillon
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Indianapolis Motor Speedway Michael McDowell NASCAR Cup Series