Michael McDowell finally wins a NASCAR Cup race in his 358th start—and he picks the NASCAR’s biggest race to do it.
McDowell drove between the two leaders of the Daytona 500 as they crashed on the final lap of the rain-delayed race to finish ahead of last year’s series champion Chase Elliott. McDowell, driving for one of the most prominent small-budget teams in the sport, had only three previous top-five finishes in his dozen years as a fulltime driver in the series.
The race was red-flagged after a crash on the fifteenth lap took out more than one-fourth of the forty-car field.
The car of Joplin driver Jamie McMurray, who came out of retirement to drive the 77 Spire Motorsports car (far right), was damaged during the crash but was repaired by his pit crew, ran near the top ten most of the night and made it through the final-lap carnage. McMurray finished eighth, his best finish in the 500 since he won it in 2010.
Rain stopped the race after the first big crash for more than four hours. McDowell took the checkered flag shortly before midnight, CST.