The NASCAR Ford teams have been struggling a bit during the 2024 Cup Series season. With 11 races in the books, The Blue Oval has yet to find Victory Lane, although some drivers like Josh Berry aren’t overly concerned, confident that Ford will pull through in the near future. Michael McDowell, driver of the No. 34 Ford Mustang Dark Horse, is in the same boat, keeping his chin up despite a string of disappointing finishes over the past few weeks, according to a report from NASCAR.com.
McDowell’s efforts over the last six races have culminated in a mediocre average finish of 31.2. Three consecutive DNFs certainly didn’t help, including wrecking from the lead at Texas, a particularly heartbreaking finish as he again wrecked from the lead heading to the checkered flag at Talladega, and a hub failure that put him out of competition at Dover last weekend.
“No doubt, it’s been a rough few weeks, right?” said McDowell, who won the 2021 Daytona 500.
At Dover, the failed hub was a single-source part, meaning that it was supplied to NASCAR Ford racers by an approved supplier and is not assembled in-house by individual teams. McDowell said he was disappointed to discover that the failure wasn’t necessarily his team’s fault.
“Last weekend in Dover, we had a right-front hub break, and that’s a spec part,” he said. “That’s a sealed part. We just found out today… it only had one race on it, had no damage. It wasn’t out of mileage, so nothing to indicate that we did anything wrong. It was just a failure. And so sometimes you have failures, right? And so it’s just been a rough stretch.”
However, he’s not letting it get to him, and says that the No. 34 NASCAR Ford team has what it takes to win.
“If you stay in your mind about it, it can mess you up. But I don’t,” McDowell said. “I mean, if I break it down analytically and I think about it, I can give you good excuses for all of them. Excuses don’t produce results in racing, and we all know that.”
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