Michael McDowell, NASCAR Driver
Sports Spectrum Podcast
Sports Spectrum
5 • 661 Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2019
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Episode 230
Michael McDowell has been on a race track almost his entire life. At the early age of three, when most kids were learning to ride a tricycle, McDowell began competing in bicycle motocross (BMX) events. At eight years old, he moved up to four wheels and started kart racing, traveling the country for the next 10 years – along the way winning 18 consecutive feature races, a World Karting Association championship and back-to-back International Kart Federation championships.
Still in his teens, McDowell graduated to larger open-wheel race cars, earning a championship in Formula Renault USA in 2002. Moving to the Star Mazda Series, he took Rookie of the Year honors in 2003 and yet another championship title in 2004, a season in which he had seven wins and six poles.
In 2007, the young driver took his talents to the world of stock car racing. Competing in his first full season in the ARCA Series, McDowell scored four wins and nine poles, claiming Rookie of the Year honors and finishing second in the championship. Later that same year, he got a taste of stock car racing’s highest levels of competition, tapped to run a handful of races in two of NASCAR’s national series, the Camping World Truck Series and the XFINITY Series.
Despite only running a few races, McDowell’s talent got noticed. And the following year, the 23-year-old was hand-picked by Michael Waltrip Racing to run full-time on NASCAR’s biggest stage, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, where he has now competed for 10 seasons. He also continued to race in the XFINITY Series, amassing one win, six top-five and 20 top-10 finishes, and two poles over nine seasons. He earned his best Cup series career finish in 2017, finishing fourth at Daytona International Speedway. In 2018, he finished 11th at the Daytona 500.
On this episode of the podcast, we talk to Michael about his 2018 racing season, why he got into racing, where his faith in Christ took shape, why he is passionate about evangelism, and how God's hand was with him in one of the worst crashes he suffered.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sports Spectrum, the Sports and Faith podcast that brings Jesus back into the conversation. |
| 0:17.5 | Here's your host, Jason Romano. |
| 0:19.9 | This episode of the Sports Spectrum podcast with NASCAR driver Michael McDowell is brought to you by Compassion International. |
| 0:28.1 | We're so thankful for compassion partnering with us here on the Sports Spectrum podcast. |
| 0:33.3 | And what they're doing, releasing children from poverty, is amazing. |
| 0:37.8 | And what they allow you to do is partner up with them, $38 a month. |
| 0:42.5 | And your money goes to food, education, medical care, and vocational training. |
| 0:47.6 | And it's all done in the name of Jesus. |
| 0:49.4 | It's $38. |
| 0:50.7 | Every child being disciples in the Word of God, over 150,000 children coming to know Christ and follow Christ in the last year alone because of the great work being done by Compassion International. |
| 1:03.7 | More powerful than poverty. That's what it is. $38, you release a child from poverty by sponsoring them through Compassion International. |
| 1:12.3 | Here's the website. |
| 1:13.1 | Compassion.com slash sports spectrum. |
| 1:16.1 | Compassion.com slash sports spectrum. |
| 1:18.9 | Join us in releasing children from poverty in Jesus' name. |
| 1:23.1 | Today on the podcast, we welcome NASCAR driver Michael McDowell to the show. |
| 1:28.3 | Michael drives the number 34 for front row motorsports and finished 26th in 2018 in the Monster Energy |
| 1:34.3 | NASCAR Cup series. He has six top 10 finishes in his career that began in 2008. And in the |
| 1:41.8 | 2018 Daytona 500, Michael finished ninth in the first race of the year. And that was his |
| 1:48.0 | fifth straight top 15 finish at Daytona and tied his career best finish in the big race. Now, of course, |
| 1:56.3 | Sunday, February 17th, 2019 next month, Michael will be racing in the Daytona 500 yet again, so you can |
| 2:03.2 | watch him there and check it out. But I wanted to have Michael on the podcast because I've read a lot |
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