Michael McDowell says his Indianapolis qualifying times made him nervous ‘in a good way’

Michael McDowell dominated at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course, throughout the entire weekend, from practice to the checkered flag.

“It’s amazing. … To have a car that good,” said McDowell, via Actions Detrimental with Denny Hamlin. “I don’t think in my career in the Cup Series I’ve ever had a car that good. So to go out there and do it and execute it and get it done, is amazing. So it’s a day that we’ll remember forever.

“It’s just what you dream of. I mean, to have a car that good, and to have it at Indy, and to kiss the bricks, it’s amazing.”

While the result was a dream come true, McDowell was nervous after realizing he had the car to beat in practice, as he told Hamlin it’s not something that happens every weekend for him.

“Honestly, it made me super nervous that next day,” McDowell explained, after realizing he had a car capable of winning the weekend. “Just because I was feeling it. Like I felt like I did have the car to beat. Short run, long run. Lap average. All the metrics that we use, we had the top of it. And I was feeling it. I woke up on Sunday morning, I was like, ‘Ah, I’m anxious,’ but in a good way. Not in a bad way, but in a good way. Feeling like, ‘Alright, I’ve got the car to beat. Now I’ve got to go do it.’ Once the race started and you get locked in, that all goes away. You just get laser-focused on what you have to do. I knew that when I needed to be aggressive early.

“That’s one thing that I learned at Sonoma last year, you know, restarting third, I had a shot to get both [Chris] Buescher and [Daniel] Suarez on a restart. I’m like, ‘I’m going to let these guys battle it out and wear out their tires.’ Next thing you know, you’re two seconds behind them with laps to go and you’ve got no chance. So you learn from those mistakes. I just knew that I wanted to get to the lead early, take control of the race if we had the speed to do it, which we did. So it was a well executed race on all fronts. Pit stops, everything went great and you know, it’s not every weekend that you have an opportunity to do that, and so for me, it was a big day.”

Nervous? You wouldn’t have been able to tell with the way Michael McDowell drove on Sunday. He’ll be hoping to carry that momentum into the playoffs, now officially locked in.

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