INDIANAPOLIS — Michael McDowell spent most of his NASCAR days as a start and park driver. Coming into the 2021 season, he had just 3 top five finishes to his name. That’s three top fives in 357 starts.

At that time, he was struggling to make ends meet. He was driving his motorhome from race to race just trying to get by while his family was continuing to grow. But, racing is all he knows and he was dedicated to one day make this right.

“Well, just so you know, my plan was never to have five kids. That’s crazy. It’s a lot of kids,” McDowell said. “I don’t know if anybody has got a lot of kids, but five is a lot.”

McDowell is a devout Christian and through his and his wifes faith, they felt called to adopt.

“The Lord had different plans. So when we had our son, I was like, this is perfect, one kid, we can manage this on the road and still travel and I was driving the bus and all that,” McDowell continued.

“Then we just felt called to adopt, and we started that process, and it took a long, long time and a lot of road blocks and a lot of different things happened over those — took seven years for the adoption to go through.

“In those seven years my wife was like, I think we should have more kids, and I was like, no, that’s a bad idea. We were struggling and barely making it, and I’m starting and parking and driving my motor home and not doing anything well.

“But looking back now, it’s the greatest thing we’ve ever done. We have a big family. We have great, healthy kids, and it’s kind of who we are. When we get on the plane and we take half the plane, people look at us like we’re crazy, and I know that. I know we’re crazy. We are. You should see all the stuff we have to bring. But it’s who we are. We travel as a family and we stay together as a family.

“This sport is tough on families, and you know that. You guys live it. You’re here every weekend, and you’re away from your family. You don’t have them come and travel.

“So being that I can, we just made it a priority.”

That priority is measured. McDowell knows that with a team like FRM, nothing against them, but they’re not going to win every race. They don’t have the man power or resources to do so. As a result, they pick and choose what races are best for him to possibly have the chance to fight for a win.

“We go to the ones that we think we can win, and we talk about it,” McDowell admitted. “We do, we talk about it as a family, like all right, we’re all going to be there, this is the weekend.”

One weekend they missed? 2021 Daytona 500. Daytona was a place that they’d have normally have gone to because it’s a place a win could come for McDowell. They couldn’t go in 2021.

See, that race was still under COVID restrictors so at that time, most families didn’t travel to the races.

McDowell, 0-for-357, won. You always remember your first one, especially with the journey and sacrifices that he’s made to get there and the most important people of his life weren’t there to share in the biggest win moment of his.

“Yeah, it’s such a big deal. Winning the Daytona 500 was one of the coolest moments you could ever have, but going to Victory Lane without your family, that was tough,” he said. “What people don’t understand is we have traveled to Daytona every single year for 16 years. That’s the first one they’ve missed, and so for the first one that they miss to be the one that I win, it was like, oh. But we didn’t fixate on it. I told my kids, there’s going to be another one. There’s going to be another one.

“Winning in the Cup Series is so hard, you just never know. It was definitely special today.”

Unfortunately, there hadn’t been another one. 35 races in 2021, all 36 in 2022. 23 more in 2023. Was it ever going to come?

“We cherry pick; my family comes to the races we think we can win. We thought we could win this one,” he said of Indy.

So all five kids, McDowell’s wife and he hopped on a plane in North Carolina and jet their ways to the Circle City in hopes of finally seeing their dad, her husband, finally win in person.

Talk about pressure.

He went to bed Saturday night nervous. He knew he had something special here. He was quickest in practice. Not only that, but he was also fastest in every metric. With his road racing abilities, he went to bed on Saturday night uneasy. He didn’t want to screw this up with his family here.

“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.

“But yesterday was just different. When I unloaded yesterday, I felt like, yeah, we’re going to be contenders.

“If you just look at practice, we were the fastest in practice, fastest five lap, fastest ten lap, fastest average, and I woke up this morning nervous. I really did. I don’t normally wake up nervous. I was anxious, feeling like, I think I have a race-winning car here, and I’ve just got to go do my job and not look like an idiot.”

Not only did he not look like an idiot, he put the whole garage on notice that they’re a force here but that added motivation hit deep. With such a good car and all his family here, he had to deliver.

“If it didn’t happen this weekend, we’d go to Watkins Glen and say all right, guys, this is the weekend,” McDowell admitted.

Luckily, they’ll go to Watkins Glen hopeful to see their dad and husband win for a second time.

McDowell led three times for 54 laps but the most important one was the last one. He inherited the lead after the final round of stops cycled through and held on to beat Chase Elliott to his second career NASCAR Cup Series victory.

“It was a whole new experience, and Daytona was — it’s still awesome, and I think you and I talked about this, I didn’t want anybody to feel like, oh, poor me, he didn’t have his family, and he just won the biggest race. So I didn’t want that to be the story,” he continued.

“I mean, this is special. Indianapolis is special. Even the kissing the bricks, and I got a ring — you only get rings for certain races. I got the two best rings you can get.

“All that stuff is just so neat. It’s just humbling, and I’m thankful and grateful.

“Yeah, it’s just a dream come true. It really is.

“I think today was more special for me than the 500. Not that it was bigger than the 500. I don’t want anybody to write that. It’s not bigger than the 500. The 500 is the biggest race you can win, but it was more special to me because of how we did it. We dominated the race. We had the fastest car, and we executed. That’s what dreams are made of.

“To do it like we did it today I think is super special.

“I’m sorry that it was a boring race for the fans.”