McDowell Wants Another Chance to Feel Daytona 500 Winning Sensation

41-year-old Michael McDowell is the pure embodiment of persistence in the world of NASCAR. The once-promising Michael Waltrip Racing development driver had to resort to start-and-parking early in his career just to keep his foot in the door. But after years of doing whatever needed to be done, McDowell found his footing, and after 14 seasons and 439 races of toiling around in the NASCAR Cup Series, McDowell finally visited victory lane, and he did so in the sport's biggest race, the Daytona 500, in 2021.

McDowell says that before you capture the Harley J. Earl trophy, the impressive award handed out annually to the Daytona 500 champion, you feel like you have a sense of what winning The Great American Race really means. But after winning the race, in a media teleconference on Monday, McDowell said that anyone who feels they understand what it means to win the race truly has no idea until they actually do it.

Hell, McDowell says, even after winning the Daytona 500, he still can't quite describe it.

"I think that before winning it, you have this idea of how big it is and what it would feel like and what it would mean. But that really doesn't do it justice until you experience it," McDowell said. "And then once you experience it, and same thing, I can't describe it. Like it would be hard for me to put it in words, but once you experience it, you want to experience it again, right? Because it's such an awesome sensation. It's an awesome time. It's incredible for your team and your teammates and your partners and the momentum that you get from it and the energy that you get from it. I mean, there's so much good that comes from, you know, winning the Daytona 500 that it's hard to really put it into words and articulate it well."

While he can't articulate the feeling, McDowell wants to claim the sensation of soaring across the finish line first in the Daytona 500, once again in 2026. If he could win the race again, it would give McDowell a chance to experience celebrating the win with his family, as his 2021 Daytona 500 win came while the sport was being run with COVID restrictions in place.

"It was definitely a weird time," McDowell recalled. "You know, we were obviously racing, there were some fans, but you couldn't have a lot of people, you know, in the pits, or couldn't have your family with you. So there was still a decent amount of restrictions."

While McDowell would love to showcase the spoils of Daytona's victory lane with his family, he wants to be clear that the protocols in place in 2021 didn't diminish his victory in any way.

"Honestly, all that is a blur, right? I mean, what I remember is over the radio, them saying 34 to Victory Lane. I mean, that part I'll never forget," McDowell stated. "And just the excitement and the adrenaline rush and just all the things that come with winning the biggest race that we have. Now, like I said, there were some times where you're like, 'Hey, they say we can't hug.' You're trying to high-five your crew guys and run over there. And there are things that we couldn't do. But yeah, I think that for the most part, for me, [I'll remember] just the pure excitement of winning, the Great American Race."

The Daytona 500 is just special. When you head to victory lane, you've done more than simply win a NASCAR Cup Series race, which, let's not get it twisted, is already impressive in its own right. But what you've done is etch your name in the history books along some of the biggest names in the history of the sport by winning a race that every team spends the entire offseason laser-focused on winning. McDowell calls winning this race a lifetime achievement.

"The thing that I think sometimes gets lost, and, you know, the Super Bowl is a great example of that, it's just like, it's a lifetime commitment. Like most of us have dedicated our entire lives from the time we were five years old, every weekend at a racetrack for that moment to have an opportunity, to be one of a very few selected people who have won the Daytona 500. And to get to experience that is unreal," McDowell said.

Not only is a win in the Daytona 500 a crowning achievement for race car drivers, as McDowell has shown, it can serve as the catalyst to authoring an incredible set of chapters in the back-half of your racing career.

Since that fateful evening at Daytona International Speedway in 2021, a lot has changed for McDowell. The driver picked up his second career NASCAR Cup Series win at another historic racing venue, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on the track's road course layout in 2023. McDowell, a driver once known as a journeyman racer, who was often passed over, suddenly became a hot commodity behind the wheel.

Heading into the 2025 season, he signed only his second-ever long-term contract, as he moved from Front Row Motorsports to Spire Motorsports as the driver of the No. 71 Chevrolet. Fortunately, this time around, his long-term deal has lasted longer than his original 2008 contract with Michael Waltrip Racing, which he noted only lasted nine months.

While he knows at 41-years-old, he is far closer to reaching the end of his racing career than he is to the beginning of his career, McDowell isn't focused on when it's time to hang up the helmet. Instead, he is focused on rewarding Spire Motorsports for its decision to sign him to a multi-year contract.

"What's the end Road? I don't even know," McDowell said when asked about his career timeline. "I really, I really don't. I mean, I think that, you know, for me, it's the opportunity in front of me right now. And, I know that I have a great opportunity and that this is, for sure, the best we've come into a season with the most amount of confidence. And yeah, it's just time to go do it."

Sparking McDowell's confidence are changes that the driver says the Spire Motorsports team has quietly made in the offseason to assist its teams in bringing more speed to the track consistently each weekend, but McDowell notes that the exciting part in this sport is seeing if the gains Spire Motorsports has made can dwarf the gains made by other organizations.

"...We've made some, you know, some big steps in the offseason from you know just processes and procedures and you know how to make our race cars faster and you know how to execute better," McDowell explained. "So you always go into the new season it's a fresh start and a new opportunity to go and try to win races and I feel like every team comes in optimistic every team made gains in the offseason and so this is the exciting part where you actually get to see did we like we'll find out really soon in the next five weeks we'll see how well we really did because our sport is all about results on Sunday."

Heading into Sunday's Daytona 500, Michael McDowell should be considered a major threat to be in contention for the race win. He's confident. He's hungry. He's ready for more.

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