INDIANAPOLIS — Michael McDowell, welcome to racing supremacy. The 38-year-old Arizona native just won at a motorsports mecca by winning Sunday’s Verizon 200 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. While it’s not an oval win here, a win is a win, especially on these hallowed grounds.

For McDowell, it was a perfect time to pick up his second career NASCAR Cup Series victory. The other?

2021 Daytona 500.

Both put him in the playoffs but this year, the Front Row Motorsports driver has a legitimate chance to do something special here.

 “Oh, man, this is such a dream come true,” an emotional McDowell said on the Yard od Brick. “I’m so thankful to everybody at Front Row Motorsports, Bob Jenkins, Horizon Hobbies, Fr8 Auctions, Chicago Pneumatic.

“Man, we had a fast Ford Mustang. Everybody at Roush Yates engine shop, Doug, these guys gave me everything today. We had the fastest car. We executed, and we did what we needed to do.

“Just so thankful, so thankful to still be grinding it out in the Cup Series. To put on a performance like that, I don’t know if it was dominant, but it felt pretty dominant to me.

“I thought we could point our way in, but after the car that we had yesterday in practice, I thought, man, we’ve got a good shot at winning if we could just get track position and maintain it.

“Just I can’t believe it, so thankful.”

Sunday’s win was his sixth top 10 finish of the season. Outside of having 12 a year ago, he has more through 24 races now than he had in any given season outside of 2022. It’s not just the top 10’s, for a team like Front Row Motorsports, it’s more about being in the top 15. He’s racked up 10 of them this year and when you have Talladega and the Charlotte ROVAL in the second round, who’s to say that he can’t take a win in one of those two playoff races in the Round of 12? That would propel him to an unprecedented Round of 8 semifinal appearance.

Think of about that.

That’s how massive of a win Sunday was for this No. 34 Ford team.

He held off Chase Elliott by .937-seconds for his third top 10 result, (12th, 7th, 7th, 1st) in four road races run this season.

“I was really trying to pace myself,” said McDowell. “I figured there would be a late-race caution, and I didn’t want to burn my stuff up. I was just trying to maintain that gap.

“Then when I got into traffic, started closing, I had to push it, but I just can’t believe it.”

For Elliott, the gap may read second, but it’s much further than that however. A win would have put him into the playoffs. A McDowell win?

That’s an 80-point gap.

That’s why he was chasing him so hard because second means nothing to him. He lost 25 points by finishing runner-up as he entered the day -55.

“Just to be a little better through the back half over there and get off of 14 a little better just to have myself in a better spot getting into 1,” Elliott said.

“Just really appreciate the effort, man. Our Napa Chevy was really good, really good.

“Just needed just a little bit more and came up a bit short. But congrats to Michael, 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.”

An 80-point differential stood between McDowell and Elliott over that final stint but the 2020 series champion couldn’t close it enough to take his first trip to victory lane in the last 29 races (22 starts).

“Yeah, I lost too much ground under that pit cycle and was trying to pace myself for the long haul,” Elliott continued. “It kind of had that green flag feel. I thought I did that, just needed to do a better job getting through traffic there.”

Ironically enough, in both of McDowell’s wins now, Elliott had the best view in each. He was second.

Also, for the third straight time in this race, the winner scored his second career win too.

Daniel Suarez, Tyler Reddick and Alex Bowman rounded out the top five in the wildly clean race.

Pit Stop Costs Suarez Potential Playoff Spot

“We win as a team and lose as a team,” Daniel Suarez boasted after finishing a disappointing third in Sunday’s Verizon 200. Suarez took a much more measured approach because he could be fuming mad at the moment. The Trackhouse Racing driver entered pit lane for the final time of the race on Lap 49 in second. He was right on Michael McDowell’s bumped as he, McDowell and Chase Elliott each hit pit lane together.

That was the moment of the race.

“The guys brought a very fast race car,” Suarez said. “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.”

Suarez’ team struggled on that stop which took him from second to third but over 9 seconds back. He’d make up 4 seconds in the final stint but it didn’t make much of a difference.

He’d still finish third.

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

Due to McDowell winning, it took Suarez from -5 entering to -28 leaving.

It basically eliminates all the points he made up on Monday in Michigan. Suarez went from -34 to -3 a week ago. That’s a 31-point gain in Michigan put him back in striking distance. So did his pole on Saturday. So did scoring the second most points all day with 51. He was 2nd in Stage 1 and 3rd in Stage 2.

It was all now for not.

The thing is, he does have momentum in regards to finishes as this was his third top six finish since Atlanta. He finished fifth last year in Watkins Glen, the site of next Sunday’s race too.

“Definitely we can perform I think even better,” he said. “I felt like yesterday we were very strong, and today we were strong. We were lacking a little bit. I didn’t like my first half of the race. But I’m pretty sure we’re going to go back, analyze everything, and come back stronger next week.”

He showed in Michigan that he can make up that much ground.

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Wallace Now Needs To Be Worried

Bubba Wallace doubled his points gap over the cutline in Richmond in going from +27 to +54. Last week in Michigan, he maintained. He came to Indy +58. Would that be enough?

Michael McDowell’s win and his 18th place finish with no stage points was a 30 point loss here. He’s now +28. He’ll admit that road courses are his worst tracks and with finishes of 37th, 17th, 31st and now 18th on them this season and 35th at Watkins Glen last year, he’s in real danger.

Daniel Suarez was 6th last week and 3rd this. He didn’t win because of a bad pit stop. He was fifth a year ago in Watkins Glen and if he does like he did in Michigan by gaining 31 points, Wallace could go to Daytona below the cutline.

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Hendrick Gets Momentum Back, But It Doesn’t Mean Much

Hendrick Motorsports put 3 cars in the top 8 and all four in the top 14 on Sunday. However, it didn’t do much for them in the long game. Chase Elliott finished second but he’s now -80 in the standings. Alex Bowman scored his first top 10 finish since Richmond’s spring race (13 starts without one) by being P5. He too is -80.

Kyle Larson was solid in Stage 1 (5th) but made a mistake in the second stage and lost several spots. He’d never rebound and came home 8th.

Even William Byron who failed inspection three times, lost his car chief, lost hit pit selection, didn’t get to qualify and had to come down pit road at the start still came from last (39th) to finish 14th.

With 2 races left, unless Bowman and Elliott win both, 1 of their cars will be out of the playoffs. Possibly both.

Hendrick Motorsports at one point was the toast of the town. They had won 2 of the last 3 Cup Series titles and this past spring, looked like they could get at least 2 cars to the Championship 4 this Fall. Now, they may leave 2 cars home from the playoffs.

Think about that.

They entered having scored finishes of P5-P33-P35-P36 on Monday in Michigan which his why these finishes are nice, but it doesn’t mean much.

HMS won 3 of the first 7 races and 4 of the opening 9. They’ve won 2 of the last 14.

Bowman has tumbled from a points lead to not having a top 10 finish since the spring Richmond race (13 races ago) entering this weekend. Granted, penalties and missing three races contributed to that too.

Elliott missed six races to injury and one to suspension.

William Byron had 3 top 5 finishes in the first 5 races, then a stretch of six straight top eight finishes. Since that? 1 top 5 over the last 10.

Kyle Larson has 12 top 10 finishes, 10 of which in the top 5. His problem is, when he’s not in the top 5, he’s struggling. He also has 10 finishes of 18th or worse too including 3 of his last 6 on the season being 19th or worse at that.

Can HMS turn this ship around?

They won 10 Brickyard 400’s but 0-for-3 now on the road course.

It’s to Watkins Glen next to where they have won the last four.

Then it’s to Daytona to where they may once again struggle.

They’re tied with the Wood Brothers for most Daytona wins in the NASCAR Cup Series. Each have 15. Both have also won those 15 races with 7 different drivers. However, HMS’ once dominance prowess has since cooled. They won 11 races between 1995 and 2015. In fact, 7 of those 11 occurred from July 2004 and July 2015. They’ve won this race 6 times.

Since 2016 though, they have just one win. What’s bizarre is, it’s not like they’ve not shown up down here without speed. They’ve arguably had the fastest cars off the truck. It’s just that they’ve not had race day speed to correlate with race day handling. Hendrick Motorsports teammates Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott shared the front row of this race last year. It’s was actually the 4th straight HMS pole at Daytona and 12th in the last 16 tries on the high banked 2.5-mile Florida superspeedway. The only 4 poles they didn’t win was Greg Biffle (July 2016), Joey Logano (July 2019), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (February 2020) and Kevin Harvick (Aug. 2020).

However, 2 of the 4 weren’t won on speed. Logano’s pole in 2019 was on points. Same for Harvick in 2020 as we didn’t qualify that year.

Still, HMS failed to win with having just 1 win in the last 15 Daytona races now and that’s counting February when they had another front row sweep. Elliott led the most laps (31) last year but none of them even scored a top 10.

Elliott was runner-up in the 2019 Coke Zero Sugar 400, runner-up in the 2020 Daytona 500, 8th in the 2021 ‘400 and 10th in the 2021 Daytona 500. While he won two superspeedway races last year, he was 38th, 12th and 13th this year.

Larson has never won a superspeedway race and has just 1 top 5 in 39 starts on them at that. He was 18th, 31st, 33rd and 36th on them this season.

Bowman is always quick on superspeedways but he has just one top five finish in his career at Daytona. That was back in February’s Daytona 500. He was 14th, 13th and 26th in the other three superspeedway races.

William Byron is the only one I’d consider looking at. He has two top two finishes in his last five Coke Zero Sugar 400 starts. His Daytona 500 starts? 23rd, 21st, 40th, 26th, 38th and 34th respectively. He’s better here in the summer and won this past July in Atlanta. He was also seventh in Talladega.

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Race Without Stage Breaks Fine By Me

I warned this could happen. The new restart zone rules was nice and all, but I wondered how much we’d actually use it.

Without stopping for stage breaks, there was a potential for this race to be clean and green.

While the stages remain the same, the racing action continues on and won’t come to a stop for a caution.

Joe Gibbs Racing driver Denny Hamlin said earlier this year that he has some concerns about doing away with the stage breaks. He said that he expected the race to be more physically challenging without the scheduled opportunity to pit.

“I think this thing has the potential of really getting strung out, a lot” Hamlin said. “If we do, I don’t want to hear any complaining because that’s the potential. … this will make for more strategy though.”

Boy was he right.

Just one caution for three laps occurred. 79 of the 82 laps ran clean and green. By comparison, the first year saw 6 cautions for 25 laps. 2022 had 5 for 15.

73.6% of the inaugural race was run under green flag conditions. That upped to 82.5% last year. This weekend, it was 96.3%.

Fans aren’t going to like how this race looked. I do. I felt like the best car and the best driver won. It wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t a comedy of errors in the end. It was a pure race.

NASCAR started this stage format in 2017 as it rewards points for the top 10 finishers of the two stages. It’s done to make the drivers actually race from the onset of the green flag but also give fans a break to go to the bathroom or concession stand or if you’re at home, to walk away from the TV at the two stoppages.

However, most fans didn’t take to it like NASCAR thought they would. Many fans liked the idea of stages, but why not just continue on with the green flag action? Award points and if the flag was a green checkered like it was, doesn’t green mean, go?

Hence the change.

It was becoming the norm for teams to elect to pit right before the stage would end to give up points for track position. They don’t have that luxury anymore. They automatically knew when two cautions would fly so would plan accordingly. It took the strategy aspect out of these races.

I now like that strategy plays are back in the hands of the teams again and that these races won’t carry on forever. You now don’t know when cautions are coming and can open up when to pit and when not to do so.

“Yeah, I mean, you’re going you go back to I mean, really pitting the race backwards,” Ryan Blaney told me on Saturday morning. “I think you can do this race in two stops. There was kind of a mixture of two stops last year and three stops.

“So yeah, I mean it just changed it you know, it’s back to the old form before the stage breaks. So if you can pin it backwards and the fastest cars are really going to show up, you know, because before when he had stage races in the you know, those the fastest cars, they would obviously probably flip the stage trying to set themselves up for the end and if you were a little bit off the pace, you could stay out try to get some stage points and then reacted from there.

“So that’s, you know, that’s just changed. So it benefits faster cars, which is good. So more traditional what it used to be not too long ago but you know, six, seven years ago.”

Blaney said he’s a fan of this move.

“You know, it just flips the whole field and I think it can get pretty difficult so I think the way to do it here on all road courses is the right way to do it,” he continued. “You know, have your have your stage points, but don’t throw the yellow because I think it makes more sense that way.”

AJ Allmedinger said that it also will help the faster cars as well too.

“I mean, I think at the end of the day, you still got to be fast enough to run up front,” he told me. “It does you no good to get up front and not be fast enough and get past by everybody anyway, so you know, it’s people are still going to pit when they think it’s right. But you know, right now, when I’m this far off, it’s it talks about playoffs and stuff like that doesn’t mean anything. It’s about just trying to be better. And I got to figure out how to do that.”

NASCAR Cup Series Race – Verizon 200 at the Brickyard

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course

Indianapolis, Indiana

Sunday, August 13, 2023

1. (4)  Michael McDowell, Ford, 82.
2. (3)  Chase Elliott, Chevrolet, 82.
3. (1)  Daniel Suarez, Chevrolet, 82.
4. (2)  Tyler Reddick, Toyota, 82.
5. (9)  Alex Bowman, Chevrolet, 82.
6. (13)  Chase Briscoe, Ford, 82.
7. (12)  Martin Truex Jr., Toyota, 82.
8. (6)  Kyle Larson, Chevrolet, 82.
9. (7)  Christopher Bell, Toyota, 82.
10. (8)  Shane Van Gisbergen(i), Chevrolet, 82.
11. (17)  Chris Buescher, Ford, 82.
12. (10)  Ty Gibbs #, Toyota, 82.
13. (16)  Ryan Blaney, Ford, 82.
14. (39)  William Byron, Chevrolet, 82.
15. (20)  Austin Cindric, Ford, 82.
16. (27)  Austin Dillon, Chevrolet, 82.
17. (21)  Ross Chastain, Chevrolet, 82.
18. (19)  Bubba Wallace, Toyota, 82.
19. (25)  Denny Hamlin, Toyota, 82.
20. (22)  Brad Keselowski, Ford, 82.
21. (24)  Harrison Burton, Ford, 82.
22. (11)  Brodie Kostecki, Chevrolet, 82.
23. (38)  Kevin Harvick, Ford, 81.
24. (37)  Mike Rockenfeller, Chevrolet, 81.
25. (34)  Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Chevrolet, 81.
26. (26)  AJ Allmendinger, Chevrolet, 81.
27. (35)  Ty Dillon, Chevrolet, 81.
28. (31)  Jenson Button, Ford, 81.
29. (14)  Corey LaJoie, Chevrolet, 81.
30. (29)  Andy Lally, Ford, 81.
31. (30)  Ryan Preece, Ford, 81.
32. (32)  Josh Bilicki(i), Chevrolet, 81.
33. (28)  Kamui Kobayashi(i), Toyota, 81.
34. (18)  Joey Logano, Ford, 81.
35. (36)  Erik Jones, Chevrolet, 81.
36. (5)  Kyle Busch, Chevrolet, 80.
37. (23)  Todd Gilliland, Ford, 80.
38. (15)  Justin Haley, Chevrolet, 80.
39. (33)  Aric Almirola, Ford, 79.

Average Speed of Race Winner:  92.319 mph.

Time of Race:  2 Hrs, 9 Mins, 59 Secs. Margin of Victory:  0.937 Seconds.

Caution Flags:  1 for 3 laps.

Lead Changes:  10 among 7 drivers.

Lap Leaders:   D. Suarez 1-5;M. McDowell 6-16;C. Elliott 17;C. Bell 18-26;A. Dillon 27;D. Hamlin 28-35;M. McDowell 36-48;D. Suarez 49;*. Van Gisbergen(i) 50;C. Bell 51-52;M. McDowell 53-82.

Leaders Summary (Driver, Times Lead, Laps Led):  Michael McDowell 3 times for 54 laps; Christopher Bell 2 times for 11 laps; Denny Hamlin 1 time for 8 laps; Daniel Suarez 2 times for 6 laps; Austin Dillon 1 time for 1 lap; Chase Elliott 1 time for 1 lap; * Shane Van Gisbergen(i) 1 time for 1 lap.

Stage #1 Top Ten: 34,99,9,45,5,8,20,48,91,19

Stage #2 Top Ten: 11,34,99,6,9,8,45,48,14,5