Michael McDowell was not present at the end of Sunday’s race in Chicago to see if he could have claimed victory due to a broken throttle cable, but the Spire Motorsports driver isn’t wondering what could have happened.
“I know what would have happened,” McDowell told RACER. “We would have won the race.”
McDowell and the No. 77 Chevrolet team were the class of the field throughout the first stage and then on the Chicago street course. He took the lead at the start from pole sitter Shane van Gisbergen and led every lap of the first stage. It was early in the second stage, with McDowell still in the lead, that the throttle became a problem.
The accelerator stuck as a precaution as McDowell drove behind the pace car. He reached pit road, where the team went to work under the hood.
“Yeah, I feel like we were in control…the whole race, and I think it would have been a battle, no doubt,” McDowell said of the sinking feeling felt knowing something was wrong. “I felt like every time I needed to pull a gap on (van Gisbergen), I could, and I was working on our strategy. We knew we were going to make a stop, so I was taking care of the tires and doing everything, and behind the pace car (the) throttle stayed wide open.”
“Luckily I got to the switches pretty quickly before I ran into something and then the cable broke after that. »
Travis Peterson, McDowell’s crew chief, had the team fill the car with fuel and put new tires on it. The plan was to try to make a new strategic game work, while having McDowell be as conservative as possible. McDowell feared it wouldn’t last, however, as his quick reaction was to depress the clutch and stop the car.
Soon enough he was back on pit road as the problem persisted. The team then pushed the car behind the wall to repair the broken throttle cable, putting it several laps behind and officially out of contention. McDowell finished 32nd and van Gisbergen won the race.
“It’s a shame,” McDowell said. “We had a great car, but it is what it is. We have good momentum going into Sonoma and we know what we have to do.”
