Front Row … Michael?

With just one car left to run in qualifying for February’s Daytona 500, Michael McDowell looked poised to score the first pole of his NASCAR Cup Series career for the biggest race on the calendar.

McDowell, a two-time Cup winner and 2021 Daytona 500 champion, had won zero poles in 465 Cup starts. His team, Front Row Motorsports, only had one pole in its entire existence, won by David Gilliland at Daytona International Speedway in July 2014. Even if was just a qualifying session, a pole would’ve been a monumental achievement for both McDowell and FRM.

But as fate would have it, that last car was Joey Logano, who outran McDowell’s time and snagged the Daytona 500 pole at the last possible moment. McDowell’s quest to win a pole would have to wait.

A week was all it took, as he won on the pole for the next race at Atlanta Motor Speedway for the first of his career and the first for FRM in nearly a decade.

Two months later, McDowell won his second pole at Talladega Superspeedway. Two months later, he won another. And another. And another.

And another.

McDowell’s pole for Sunday’s (Oct. 6) YellaWood 500 at Talladega marked his unprecedented sixth pole of the season, leading all drivers. After starting his career 0-for-466 in qualifying, McDowell has now earned six poles in his last 30 starts.

One of his poles came at World Wide Technology Raceway in June, while his other five were won at superspeedways: two at Talladega, two at Atlanta and one at Daytona in August.

That qualifying success carried over to McDowell’s teammate Todd Gilliland, who qualified top four at five of the six drafting tracks this season. At Daytona in August, Gilliland qualified second behind McDowell for Front Row’s first-ever sweep of the front row in qualifying.

When combined with his front-row start in the Daytona 500, McDowell ended 2024 with a mind-boggling average start of 1.2 on drafting tracks. It’s the first time a driver has won five straight poles on superspeedways since the mid-80s. It’s the first time a driver has accomplished it since NASCAR started restricting speeds at Daytona and Talladega in 1988.

With all the single-car speed…