Where does Michael McDowell's Daytona 500 win rank on the All-Time Daytona 500 Upsets?

Where does Michael McDowell’s Daytona 500 win rank on the All-Time Daytona 500 Upsets?

By Brian Cotnoir

Last month I published an article, “Top 5 Last Lap Passes at the Daytona 500” and low and behold, yesterday we had another one!    With his last lap pass McDowell becomes the 8^th driver to get their first career win at the “Great American Race”, joining Tiny Lund, Mario Andretti, Pete Hamilton, Derrike Cope, Sterling Marlin, Michael Waltrip, and Trevor Bayne.  All victories considered “Upsets” in their own rights, but where does McDowell’s finish fit with among these greats.

Let’s look at some contributing factors: Drivers like Tiny Lund, Mario Andretti, and Pete Hamilton never competed full-time in NASCAR, but their wins in the 500 came driving for some of the greatest teams in history.  Lund won the Daytona 500 for the famous Wood Brothers team—subbing for the injured Marvin Panch—and got them the first of their 5 Daytona 500 wins.  Mario Andretti is one of the All-Time Greatest Racecar drivers; he became the first non-American born (though he is a Naturalized U.S. Citizen) driver to win the Daytona 500.  Andretti actually won the Daytona 500 2 years before he won his first and only Indy 500, and is one of only 2 drivers to win both.    Andretti was driving for the Powerhouse, Holman-Moody Racing Team when he won his Daytona 500, and Pete Hamilton was driving for Petty Enterprises in a Plymouth Superbird—the same car driven by and prepared for Richard Petty—when he won the 1970 Daytona 500.  Hamliton was a Superspeedway specialist as all 4 of his Cup Series wins came came at Daytona and Talladega.

Sterling Marlin won his first career Cup Race at the Daytona 500 in his 279^th career start.   He actually won his first 2 races at the Daytona 500.  The team Marlin drove for at the time, Morgan-McClure Motorsports, had a fantastic Superspeedway program, and 5 of Marlin’s first 6 wins came at Daytona or Talladega.  Likewise the same could be said about driver Michael Waltrip; he broke Marlin’s record for most career starts in the NASCAR Cup Series before his first win, when he won the 2001 Daytona 500 in 463^rd career start.  Waltrip’s win was marred by the tragic death of his friend and team owner, Dale Earnhardt Sr.   Like Morgan-McClure Motorsports, Waltrip’s team, Dale Earnhardt Incorporated had a fantastic Super Speedway Program!  Between 2001-2004 Waltrip and his teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr. won 10-out-of-the-12 restrictor plate races.   And like Pete Hamilton, all 4 of Waltrip’s wins came at Daytona and Talladega.  

Trevor Bayne’s first (and only) win in the Cup Series came in his 2^nd career start at the Daytona 500!   At 20-years-old (and 1 day), Bayne became the Youngest Daytona 500 winner in History.  Bayne win for the Wood Brothers gave them their first win in 10 seasons and at the time of Bayne’s win the Wood Brothers had scaled back to a part-time team.  The Wood Brothers have since returned to full-time completion, and won again in 2015 with driver Ryan Blaney.  

Derrike Cope led his team, Whitcomb Racing, to their first win when Cope passed Dale Earnhardt out of the last corner on the last lap, after Earnhardt suffered an unlucky tire puncture.  However, what I didn’t realize at the time was that Whitcomb Racing was not a new team—per se—and had actually purchased the old DiGard Motorsports team.  The car Cope won with was, essentially, an old DiGard car.   Cope and Whitcomb would only win one more race (at Dover in 1990), and team would shut down after the 1993 season.

Now that brings us to Michael McDowell.  Until his win in the Daytona 500, he was most notably known for a 2008 wreck during qualifying at Texas Motor Speedway.  His only other win in NASCAR was in a one-off appearance at Road America for Richard Childress Racing in the 2016 Xfinity Series season.  McDowell’s team, Front Row Motorsports has 2 previous wins in the NASCAR Cup Series; David Ragan won on a last lap pass at Talladega in 2013, and Chris Buescher won a weather-shortened race at Pocono in 2016.  McDowell’s win at the Daytona 500 yesterday was indeed one of the All-Time Upsets.  Believe it or not, of McDowell’s 13 Top 10 finishes in NASCAR’s Cup Series (to date), eight of them have come at Daytona.  Although, yesterday was McDowell’s first win in the Cup Series, he has shown lots of skill at Daytona.

So now comes the question: Do I still think Cope’s victory in 1990 is the biggest upset in the history of the Daytona 500?  I’m going to have to say; Yes.   I still think it is, but not by much.   I can’t deny that Cope and McDowell have had very similar career’s driving for underfunded and underpowered teams, getting their first wins in the Daytona 500 on last lap passes caused by other driver’s misfortunes, but I’m going to have to get the slight edge to Cope still, and I think the thing that gives Cope the slight edge; his win at Daytona in 1990 was his only Top 10 at the track ever! And as for the Daytona 500, Derrike Cope’s next best finish in the Great American Race was 18^th place.  I think for these reasons, you still have to chalk Derrike Cope’s win in the 1990 Daytona 500 as the Greatest Upset Victory in history of the race.