By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Michael McDowell has qualifying on superspeedways figured out this year.
For the fourth time in 2024, the driver of the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford will start at the front of the grid for Saturday night’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 after a lap of 49.136 seconds, 183.165 mph, setting a new Next Gen track record at Daytona.
McDowell is one of several drivers not yet locked into the Playoffs and counts Daytona as an opportunity race for both he and his team to try and race their way in with a victory.
He will be joined on the front row by his teammate Todd Gilliland, with Joey Logano, Ryan Preece, Josh Berry, and Chase Briscoe making up an all-Ford top-six starters.
The remainder of the top-10 will be Daytona 500 champion William Byron, Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, and Chase Elliott.
‘Just Go Race’
With Daytona serving as the penultimate race of the regular season, it’s not win or go home as it has been here in recent years, but still will be a big opportunity race for those not yet locked into the Playoffs.
Drivers and teams can strategize all they want, but at a track like Daytona, where chance comes into play just as much, a number of those drivers that need to race their way in have resigned themselves to just strapping in running the laps and just seeing how things shake out at the end of the night.
Among those is Chris Buescher, who won this race one year ago, but finds himself needing to either win Saturday night or at Darlington to punch his ticket in to the postseason. He also remains within the realm of being able to point his way in, currently sitting 16 points above the cut-off line.
“Within our organization’s walls it’s very important to try and get a win for the 17 group and go ahead and lock this thing in to where we can go to Darlington and not have any of these thoughts in the back of our minds,” said Buescher.
“When we come to Daytona it’s tricky because we’ve gone about this different ways in the past and ultimately I think we just have to go out here and race and try to be smart within our group – make decisions and try to better both of us and go race and let it fall where it will. It’s Daytona. We know things can happen, but we’ll go race hard, be smart at times, but we’ll go see what happens and see how we can find ourselves in victory lane again.”
On the other side of the coin is Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.,…
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