Michael McDowell tops qualifying for Cup Series race at Daytona and earns 4th pole of the season

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It’s a Front Row front row at Daytona International Speedway.

Michael McDowell won the pole for Saturday night’s 400-mile race at Daytona, edging Front Row Motorsports teammate Todd Gilliland in qualifying Friday.

McDowell reached a top speed of 183.165 mph around the 2 1/2-mile superspeedway, nearly four-tenths faster than Gilliland. With McDowell and Gilliland atop the speed chart, Ford garnered the top six spots in qualifying and seven of the top 10.

Joey Logano was third for Team Penske, followed by Ryan Preece, Josh Berry and Chase Briscoe of Stewart-Haas Racing.

Wiliam Byron was the fastest Chevrolet in seventh. Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott rounded out the top 10.

It was McDowell’s fourth career pole, all this season. He previously started up front at Atlanta Motor Speedway, at Talladega Superspeedway and at Gateway Motorsports Park. He failed to win any of those.

McDowell has two wins in 489 career Cup Series starts, including the 2021 Daytona 500. He took advantage of Logano and Brad Keselowski wrecking on the final lap that year for his first career victory.

He has eight top-10s in 26 starts at Daytona.

“For whatever reason, this place has been good to me in that sense of feeling the pack, feeling when things are going to happen, putting yourself in a good position,” McDowell said.

Superspeedways weren’t always his specialty, though.

“It’s different than anything else that we do or anything else that you’ve ever done in your career getting to this point,” McDowell said. “I remember the first superspeedway race I did. We were four wide on the backstraight at Talladega and I was running probably 25th, and I was like, ‘This is the dumbest thing ever.’

“I mean, what are we doing? You can’t go anywhere. You’re locked in the middle. One guy makes one wrong move and we’re all piled up in a ball. This is not racing. That’s kind of my first year. Once I’ve learned to embrace it and enjoy it and become a student of it, it’s really helped me.

“Now I come here optimistic, and when I drive through the tunnel, I think we have a better shot than most to win this race.”

McDowell currently ranks 21st in the Cup standings, 157 points behind Ross Chastain for the 16th and final playoff spot. McDowell has to win one of the two remaining regular-season races — at Daytona and Darlington — to reach the playoffs for the third time in the past five years.

McDowell has signed to race for Spire Motorsports next season after Front Row owner Bob Jenkins decided to go in a different direction. McDowell credits Jenkins with turning him from “a guy that was running 30th every weekend” to winning the Daytona 500 and a race at Indianapolis last year.

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