2025 Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora Speedway

Dale McDowell 'Still Learning' At Eldora Speedway's Dream Week

Dale McDowell finished third in Wednesday's FloRacing Night in America feature to open Dream Week at Eldora Speedway.

Jun 5, 2025 by Todd Turner

When to conserve, when to let it all hang out. That was the question for Dale McDowell on Wednesday at Eldora Speedway in racing from his eighth starting spot in a 50-lap FloRacing Night in America feature that opened Dream Week.

The 59-year-old Chickamauga, Ga., driver scored a solid third-place finish in the race where sixth-starting Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., ran away with a $20,000 payday and his third straight victory at the half-mile oval going back to last season, but McDowell wanted to see the postrace video to decide how his strategy failed him. | Complete Dream coverage

"I'm still learning, man,” McDowell said with a laugh, fully aware that his years of experiences behind the wheel of a Dirt Late Model exceeds the ages of at least 25 percent of Wednesday’s series-record 85 entrants.

"I have to change race mode — which I feel like I need to do that anyway because I've really, over the years, learned to try to manage my tires,” he continued, “and then there's times that you can and times that you can’t. So I started trying to manage my tires a little bit and I got slower and backed up.”

2025 Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora Speedway

When conservation didn’t work, McDowell let it all hang out during his eighth start of the season in his No. 17m Shane McDowell Racing Team Zero Race Car prepared by his younger brother.

"I was running about eighth or ninth and I started doing tire management a little bit and they drove away from me so I was just like, all right, I'm just gonna go and see what happens,” said McDowell, who was facing many teams that have had dozens of 2025 starts. “So I went harder. But I think that’ll be a difference in 50- or 100 (-lapper). You just have to choose when you can go and when you need to manage. I don't know. Man, with these guys, I mean the competition level's unbelievable. So hat's off to Shane and Landon (Hayes) and all the boys that work on the car.

“For us to be able to compete with those guys as many (races) as they run, it's a testament to what kind of program they do. I just hold the steering wheel and try to knock the rust off, but they've got the car balanced pretty good and so we keep working on it and see what happens.”

McDowell is scheduled to be in action again Thursday for his split-field, $30,000-to-win preliminary program, then again Saturday when a $100,000 payday is on the line in the 31st annual Dream, a race he won in 2014.

In Thursday’s 50-lapper and what’s expected to be his race-record-tying 23rd Dream start in Saturday’s 100-lapper, he’ll again have to gauge whether he should charge hard or conserve equipment.

“Depth perception will tell you where you're gaining and where you're losing from your competition in front of you,” McDowell. “So when I went to kind of driving the car straighter and less wheelspin, I was backing up.”

A bit of chop in the track likely meant more aggressiveness was needed, but there’s no promise of what track conditions will be like the rest of the week, especially with precipitation in the forecast.

“You gotta get out of your rhythm sometimes to what you normally do, and I did that tonight,” McDowell said. “I guess we'll just have to run the rest of the weekend and see what happens. It’s a guessing game.”