(Photo: Mitchell Richtmyre | The Podium Finish)
Michael McDowell sent Travis Peterson a message last fall that nearly went unanswered.
“I got an email from Michael that I thought was spam because it just said ‘Hey Travis, I got something to talk to you about,'” Peterson told The Podium Finish.
Turns out, McDowell wanted to hire Peterson as his next crew chief.
“I’ve been fortunate at Front Row [Motorsports] to have a lot of flexibility and opportunity to go find who I want,” McDowell told The Podium Finish.
Working with different crew chiefs has become ordinary for McDowell. For the third time in as many years, McDowell has a different shot caller in his ear.
From 2019-2021, veteran Drew Blickensderfer sat atop the box — helping lead McDowell to the 2021 Daytona 500 for his first NASCAR Cup Series victory. After the season, Blickensderfer left to join Aric Almirola at Stewart-Haas Racing.
McDowell turned to Blake Harris, a championship-winning car chief for Martin Truex Jr., to take over the No. 34 team in 2022. Together, they collected 12 top-10 finishes, more than double McDowell’s previous career high. The 38-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona had his most consistent season under Harris’ guidance.
“Blake brought the will to win, which is super important, and the know-how to do it because he was coming from a winning organization,” McDowell said. “He didn’t settle. That mentality has paid off.”
Harris took a job with Hendrick Motorsports to become the crew chief for Alex Bowman beginning in 2023. That left McDowell searching for yet another replacement.
“I thought it sucked, and I still think it sucks,” McDowell said. “When you have something that’s going really good, it’s no fun to start over. And it’s not just a crew chief, I mean, there’s only two guys on the 34 car that were on the 34 car last year.
“That’s a little bit of the issue that we fight. You put together a good group, you put together a good program, you run well. Then, you lose a lot of those guys to the bigger organizations because they can pay them more and offer them better benefits and all the things that we can’t do. You feel like you got to start over — so this is our third year in a row starting over.”
(Photo: Sean Folsom | The Podium Finish)
Peterson spent the last five seasons as a race engineer at RFK Racing, where he worked with Ryan Newman, Chris Buescher and Matt Kenseth. He came to FRM with five races of crew chief experience — including four last summer for Buescher. He also spent time at JR Motorsports and Hendrick Motorsports after graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a mechanical engineering degree.
“As the lead race engineer, you’re just so close to being a crew chief,” Peterson explained. “You’re assisting in all the decisions of the car and all the things you do executing a weekend strategy. I really feel like it’s a great place to prepare to become a crew chief … I feel like it’s a natural step between those two roles.”
FRM hired Peterson in November 2022, which gave him ample time to adjust to the new scenery and fill the vacant roles on the No. 34 team. Peterson, however, struggled to hire the best available road crew members, citing the 38-week schedule as a likely factor.
“It’s surprisingly hard to find people,” Peterson explained. “You get a lot of new people, even at the Cup level, who haven’t raced at all. Historically, the new guys all go to Xfinity or Trucks, then you pluck guys there that want to move up … now everybody’s happy to stay in Trucks or Xfinity and it’s hard to find people.”
A quarter of the way through the season, McDowell sits 17th in points with a highlight sixth-place finish at Richmond Raceway. Peterson instructed McDowell to run long under green and the team caught a late caution to gain track position.
McDowell has finished 12th or better in each of the last three races, including an 11th-place result at the Bristol Motor Speedway Dirt. Otherwise, McDowell took the blame for the team’s results in 2023, including finishes of 20th or worse at Daytona, Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway.
(Photo: Trish McCormack | The Podium Finish)
“It’s really just been a poor execution on my part,” McDowell said. “I’ve had too many penalties, speeding penalties, too many mistakes. That’s stopped us from getting more top 10s already.
“I just feel like I’ve been pushing probably a little bit too hard. You want to get the most out of everything, but when you overstep it, it’s easy to make mistakes … I feel like the speed is there and all the ingredients are there to have a really good season, we just got to put it all together.”
As the team hopes to hit an upward trajectory this season, Peterson attributes his relationship with McDowell as a key to success.
“Michael is a super easygoing guy, easy to talk to, very open book,” Peterson said. “We’re both kind of that way in terms of open, honest, not afraid to hurt each other’s feelings because we’re not going to hurt each other’s feelings. We just want to get the best result.”
Two years removed from his first Playoff appearance, McDowell hopes to return to the championship fight again in 2023. Though the team sits just outside the cutline, McDowell said he’s set on winning his way in.
“The goal is simple: win a race and get in the Playoffs,” McDowell said. “Consistency isn’t going to get you into the Playoffs, so got to win a race. But with that being said, you got to run in the top five to win a race … you got to make it count when it counts, and you got to build on what you got going on right now.”
