McDowell will drive for Parsons again, full races

Phil Parsons Racing will field cars for driver Michael McDowell.  Last year McDowell drove the #66 car for the team under the Prism Motorsports banner.

McDowell ran in 31 events at the Sprint Cup level last season for Parsons with a best finish of 30th at Sonoma. The team operated as a start and park in all but two of those starts.

While McDowell is unsure what number the car will have he does know that they will be switching manufactures to Ford this year and of course will have Roush-Yates powered engines. This year the team has enough sponsorship to run the first five races on the schedule which could lock them into the top-35 in owner points for the early part of the season. They will have to either qualify or work out a deal for owner points to make sure they are in the Daytona 500 this year. Last season the Daytona and Talladega were the two races that McDowell failed to qualify for.

Last season McDowell got a one race stint in the #18 car of Joe Gibbs Racing  at the Sprint Cup level when driver Kyle Busch was parked for the weekend by NASCAR following his incident with Ron Hornaday in the truck series. McDowell also ran some Nationwide events for Gibbs and will run five events in that series in 2012 for them as well. His best finish was a third place run at Montreal but he did notch top-10’s in four of his five starts.

As Lee Warren wrote from a telephone interview with McDowell

“It’s a huge deal for me to drive the 18 car,” McDowell told me. “It gives me an opportunity to win races. So I’m looking forward to growing that and continuing to do that with Pizza Ranch and a few other sponsors as well.”

Right now McDowell is slated to run at Road America, Watkins Glen, Michigan and Iowa twice in the #18 for Gibbs.

John Boarman
John Boarmanhttp://www.tireball.com
Founder and Owner of Tireball Sports.

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