{"id":10775,"date":"2022-07-31T20:33:46","date_gmt":"2022-08-01T00:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=10775"},"modified":"2022-07-31T20:33:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T00:33:46","slug":"despite-penalty-michael-mcdowell-remains-dark-horse-at-road-courses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/07\/31\/despite-penalty-michael-mcdowell-remains-dark-horse-at-road-courses\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite penalty, McDowell remains strong at road courses"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Chase Elliott. Austin Cindric. Kyle Larson. All drivers that one would expect to see up front at road courses. Michael McDowell? Not typically at the top of those lists. Here&#8217;s why he should be:<\/h3>\n<p><strong>INDIANAPOLIS &#8212;<\/strong> They say numbers don&#8217;t lie. That phrase couldn&#8217;t be any more true than when you look at <strong>Michael<\/strong> <strong>McDowell <\/strong>and his\u00a0record on road courses in recent years. Just this season, the Front Row Motorsports driver has notched a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontstretch.com\/2022\/06\/12\/underdog-mcdowell-flirt-win-sonoma\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third-place finish at Sonoma<\/a>, a solid eighth at Road America and Sunday, an eighth at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course.<\/p>\n<p>While there is quite a difference between simply finishing in the Top-10 and winning a Cup Series race, McDowell seems pretty content with the former. After his third-place finish at Sonoma in June, the 15-year Cup Series veteran said that the team is &#8220;making gains.&#8221; Certainly, those gains will need to be continued throughout the rest of the 2022 season after his team&#8217;s L2 penalty subtracted 100 driver and owner points from the team, taking McDowell and his No.34 crew from 20th to 26th in the points standings.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Michael McDowell didn\u2019t have any doubt that his team could continue its solid performance despite a hefty penalty NASCAR issued this week for altering body seams. He\u2019ll start seventh Sunday. His thoughts: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/mPo1VZPycc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/mPo1VZPycc<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bobpockrass\/status\/1553483461444370435?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">July 30, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Win Incoming?<\/h3>\n<p>I probably wouldn&#8217;t bet on it, but on a road course in the NASCAR Cup Series, you really never know. Take Sunday&#8217;s Verizon 200 at the Indianapolis Road Course, for example. The last two restarts were nothing short of absolute chaos, with drivers diving in five or six wide into Turn 1 with just a few laps to go. Eventually, it was <strong>Tyler Reddick\u00a0<\/strong>who captured the victory at Indianapolis, but even he recognized the insanity that is a road course restart. In his post-race press conference, he said &#8220;I wish I had a button to turn the (rearview) camera off.&#8221; so that he stopped watching the action behind him on the chaotic restarts.<\/p>\n<p>As any racer, McDowell still has victory at the front of his mind, despite all the adversity. Sunday&#8217;s eighth-place finish at Indianapolis makes it three road course top 10s for the 37-year-old Arizona native, and he is still feeling determined to make the Cup Series playoffs. &#8220;4 to go to make it happen.&#8221; said McDowell on his Twitter account after the race, &#8220;it&#8221; being a spot in the playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>It may be a long shot, but it comes down to this: The man won the Daytona 500, and for that reason alone, he shouldn&#8217;t be counted out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read On:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2022\/07\/31\/tyler-reddick-indianapolis-wins-ot\/\" target=\"_self\">Reddick dominates Indy, wins in OT<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>TOP IMAGE: <\/strong><strong>Chris Graythen\/Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chase Elliott. Austin Cindric. Kyle Larson. All drivers that one would expect to see up front at road courses. Michael McDowell? Not typically at the top of those lists. Here&#8217;s why he should be: INDIANAPOLIS &#8212; They say numbers don&#8217;t lie. That phrase couldn&#8217;t be any more true than when you look at Michael McDowell [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4174,"featured_media":10790,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,1664],"tags":[1039,1454,1550,816,1498],"class_list":["post-10775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nascar","category-nascar-cup-series","tag-indianapolis-motor-speedway","tag-michael-mcdowell","tag-nascar-2022","tag-tyler-reddick","tag-verizon-200"],"modified_by":"Tucker White","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}