Spire Motorsports\u2019 Michael McDowell is a renowned road course driver \u2013 a favorite every time the series stops at a track with right and left turns. And now with only three regular season races remaining to set the 16-driver Playoff field, the former Daytona 500 winner has found himself in a must-win situation to earn championship eligibility.<\/p>\n
The good news is McDowell \u2013 a former IMSA driver \u2013 is an expert road racer which bodes well for this weekend and certainly with a win in the 2021 Daytona 500, he counts that track (where the regular season ends in two weeks) as another legitimate possibility to win his way into a championship chance.<\/p>\n
McDowell comes to Watkins Glen ranked 24th in the points standings \u2013 134 points behind Roush Fenway Keselowski\u2019s Chris Buescher who holds that 16th Playoff position \u2013 the final transfer spot.<\/p>\n
McDowell has had only one top-10 finish in the last seven races. But he\u2019s scored top-five finishes in two of the four road course races this season \u2013 fifth at Mexico City and fourth place most recently at Sonoma, Calif. His two top-10 finishes at Watkins Glen have come in the last three races at the historic track.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s do or die for sure,\u2019\u2019 said McDowell, who drives the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. \u201cYes, we have more opportunities. We can go to Richmond and run well too, and obviously, Daytona, I feel like we have a shot at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut to me, this is the only way you control your own destiny is to win here. The other two are very tough to execute and have everything go your way, so times winding down, as you guys know, right? And, the pressure always ramps up as the time\u2019s winding down, but I\u2019ve been in the spot before, and, definitely feel confident that our road course programs [are] really good. And if we do our job and we have a fast car and we qualify well today, and we can start up front, we\u2019ll have a shot at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spire Motorsports\u2019 Michael McDowell is a renowned road course driver \u2013 a favorite every time the series stops…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":132525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[6162,55732,12440,80354,73004,25434,1833,1406,16972,6166,62,67,132,68,76133],"class_list":{"0":"post-132524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-chevrolet","9":"tag-chris-buescher","10":"tag-daytona","11":"tag-daytona-500","12":"tag-imsa","13":"tag-michael-mcdowell","14":"tag-motorsports","15":"tag-nascar","16":"tag-richmond","17":"tag-series","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-unitedstates","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-watkins-glen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115000553234400903","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}