The Dirt Track at Charlotte
McDowell sore but 'all right' after violent flip
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Dale McDowell flips in Thursday's heat. (zskphotography.com)
CONCORD, N.C. (Nov. 6) — Dale McDowell felt his car begin to go over. From there, he was just along for the ride.
“I just said, ‘I hope I’m awake when this is over,’ ” McDowell later recalled.
The 60-year-old Hall of Famer from Chickamauga, Ga., breathed a sigh of relief when he escaped largely unscathed from what he called “a helluva flip” during the sixth heat race of Thursday’s Dave Smith Motors World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte. He couldn’t provide any details of the wreck, however, after it started.
“They said, ‘Did this part (of the car) hit the concrete (wall)?’ ” McDowell said, referring to an inquiry he received from a track safety crew member after he climbed out of his machine. “I said, ‘I can’t tell you anything after I felt the first out-of-kilter (moment) because I closed my eyes.’ I was just hoping I was OK when I opened them back up.”
The accident was a frightening one for McDowell, a savvy veteran known for his smooth style. It was the first time in well over a decade that he had rolled a Dirt Late Model and just the third time that he had turned a car over in his 45-year racing career.
This one happened in a flash. One moment, he was barreling into turn one as the outside polesitter in the heat. Seconds later, he was sitting in his mangled machine and checking his faculties.
McDowell said he was a victim of circumstance. When polesitter Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., slid in front of him entering turn one on the opening lap, the ensuing aero-push that’s such a part of Dirt Late Model racing on especially fast tracks put McDowell into a position that spelled disaster.
“I wasn’t expecting Chris to come that way,” McDowell said. “I was expecting him to turn across, but when he come that way I floated the nose, then I was gonna check, but the 20 was there, so tried to turn on the throttle I guess I rolled the nose underneath (in the cushion). "
Shane McDowell, Dale’s younger brother, car owner and crew chief, saw Dale’s No. 17M bicycle onto its right side. “It looked like it was going to hit the wall,” Shane said, but it came back down and rolled over violently before coming to rest on its wheels.
“I looked at the video and Chris moved up, not doing anything wrong, but he moved up at the end of the straightaway and got the air off the nose and it got (Dale’s) entrance messed up,” Shane analyzed. “And the cushion’s so tall, then the right-front corner (of the nosepiece) broke off and went underneath it, and when it did it got the car up in the air a little bit and then the right-rear hit and it went over.”
When McDowell returned to his trailer with his car, a steady stream of fellow racers visited to check on him, including Jonathan Davenport, spectating Hall of Famer Gary Stuhler and World of Outlaws Late Model Series director Steve Francis. He told everyone that it was certainly a rough ride.
“Nothing hit hard, but my body, something hit everywhere,” McDowell said. “I’m feeling it all over. I got a sore elbow, my back, but I’ll be all right.”
McDowell paused and then remarked that his “acrobatics” aren’t great for a 60-year-old’s body.
“I’m too old to be pulling tricks like that,” he said with a smile.
McDowell’s Team Zero car, meanwhile, was more than just worse for the wear. He said “it’s junk,” and his brother confirmed the assessment.
“It’s killed, but it 100 percent done his job,” Shane said. “I mean, the cage, it did hit hard on the left-front (corner), and that’s what’s really scary and made me really nervous because no matter what you try to do, anything can happen, and that’s the worst place for it to hit.
“So it hit there first, but everything held up like it was supposed to. On the safety side of it everything was perfect.”
Shane said the chassis was built in 2022, one of the last Team Zero machines designed by the late Scott Bloomquist and constructed at Sweet Manufacturing in Kalamazoo, Mich.
“We had it hoarded back,” Shane said. “We didn’t run until … I think the first race we ran it was in March of ’24. I kind of kept it as our big track car since then. It’s got about 60 races on it.”
Shane made significant repairs to the car’s frame after Dale was involved in a heat-race accident during September’s World 100 at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.
“It’s had a hard life,” Shane said. “We have five races on it since we fixed it after Eldora.”
The younger McDowell said he had another car in his trailer, but the brothers decided to keep it inside and withdraw from further weekend competition. The decision was clinched on Friday morning when Dale awoke with even more soreness from the flip — one of his shoulders was especially achy — but Shane was already doubtful about running the second vehicle.
“I don't even bring a backup car a lot of times,” said Shane, who stuck around the track with his wife, brother and crew to spectate during Friday’s action. “Most of the time I bring a backup car only because when I need a spare I can go get something off it, because we got the only (Team Zero) car in the pits so I can’t borrow nothing.
“My philosophy is usually if you tear up enough s— that you got to pull out another car, we had a bad enough weekend already and should probably cut it off and stop the bleeding rather than tearing everything up in one weekend.”
Watching Dale flip was also enough trauma for Shane to experience in one weekend. It’s a downright rare occurrence for the elder McDowell, whose previous rollovers came years ago at Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, Ill., and Fayetteville (N.C.) Motor Speedway.
“He's not really ever known to be that cushion racer so usually keeps the wheels on the ground a little bit,” Shane said of his sibling. “The guys that run middle and bottom of the racetrack, they don’t turn over nowhere near as much, like Dale and Scott (Bloomquist).
“Of course, a lot of the era of their racing, the cars, their attitudes, the aero and everything wasn’t like where it is now so (flips) didn’t happen nowhere near as much. I mean, our cars are just stuck so hard, and everything keeps evolving with engineering, the aero, the suspension technology. We’re just stuck harder and harder, and then with the racetracks, when they build these cushions and stuff like that, it don’t take much because the cars are down on the racetrack so a lot of times they get like that and the right side, the frame rails, will just dig in and get you turned over.
“Right there with Dale, it definitely broke the right-front of the nose off,” he added. “But the cushion was 10 inches tall and we keep the noses sealed off, and when you go in the corner, the noses are on the ground, so when you get crossed, it’s just digging in.”
