Dale McDowell had a solid performance in the two opening nights of the Sunshine Nationals, but on Saturday night’s finale, he had troubles in his heat race that ended his night early.

While running in the fourth position with just two laps left in the fourth and final heat race, McDowell came up lame down the back stretch and nursed his car back into the infield. He never made it back on to the track to compete in a last chance showdown.

On Facebook, the team shared that it “broke a spool in the rearend while running in a transfer spot in the heat race.”

It’s a shame that McDowell’s Sunshine Nationals ended early given the longer races are his bread and butter as he’s shown at Eldora that last couple of years. He’s able to save his stuff, slowly work through the field, and be there at the end to compete for a win. While it’s unclear if that was going to be the case on Saturday night, the opportunity never even presented itself due to the rearend failure.

Despite his Sunshine Nationals finale ending early, McDowell had an admirable showing the rest of the weekend. On Thursday he finished 11th after starting in 19th. He tied with Ricky Thornton Jr. that night for passing the second most cars. They both passed 8 cars. Tyler Erb passed a whopping 18 cars to finish in 8th and was Thursday night’s hard charger.

On Friday, McDowell got his first top 10 of the year finishing in 8th after starting in 15th. He tied with Tristan Chamberlain for the third most cars passed. They both passed 7. The only other drivers to pass more cars than him were Bobby Pierce, who passed 13 cars in his 10th place finish, and Logan Zarin, who passed 8 to come home in 18th.

It is unclear where McDowell will race next. Last year he competed with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series when it arrived at All-Tech Raceway to kick off its year albeit he was competing with the Riggs Motorsports team rather than his Shane McDowell prepared 17M.

McDowell told StockCarReport.com during the World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte back in November that he was going to run a similar schedule to last year, but was not planning on running during Speedweeks, “I think we’re going to do about the same thing. Don’t think we’ll race any through Speedweeks as of right now.”

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