It was the last lap of the last race of this NASCAR Cup Series regular season, the annual Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Michael McDowell was head-to-head with some ... unfamiliar competition.
Jimmie Johnson, he of the seven Cup Series championships and one of NASCAR's most legendary drivers, was bumping and grinding with McDowell's No. 34.
Johnson ended up edging McDowell for 16th place, with the latter settling for 17th.
Innocuous, maybe, but also not.
At least, not for McDowell.
"Now for him, he's going, 'What a terrible day, this is awful, our car is terrible, we're running 17th and I'm racing the 34,' " McDowell told the Observer this week. "And I get done, and I'm like, 'Man, we had a great car, we did an awesome job, and I was racing the 48 on the last lap for position in the Top 20.'
"So it's all perspective."
That perspective comes from understanding where both drivers are this season. Johnson, as usual, is in the playoffs, doing his best to avoid elimination this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway's Roval course.
McDowell, on the other hand, is nowhere near the playoffs. At 26th in the standings, his story with Johnson raises an oft-forgotten question:
For the 20-plus NASCAR drivers who don't qualify for the playoffs, what's the point of still racing?
"The playoffs when you're not in it are very tricky, because you are still racing," McDowell said. "At the same time, you know that there's a lot on the line for those guys who are still in the playoffs, so it's definitely a challenge to navigate through that.
"But for us, we have our own battles. We have our own goals that we're trying to achieve."
