Myles Rowe sent a statement to the rest of the paddock with his historic Indy NXT drive to victory last Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway.
A communication error in qualifying left the Georgia native starting 24th (last) in the #99 Abel Motorsports with Force Indy entry, but it made no difference as he powered through the field and still led a race-high 29 of 75 laps. It marked the third victory of his career, and perhaps his most convincing one.
“Yeah, no doubt it’s a good feeling to make that achievement, most passes or just coming from the back in general,” said Rowe, 25.
“I think it’s clear that I have the skill to run in the NTT IndyCar Series. Hopefully teams see this performance. No doubt, that’s why we’re here, that’s why we all are here. I plan to just keep doing what I got to do.
“Right now I’m focusing on this championship. That’s all that matters to me at the moment.”
And Rowe has made significant strides in the championship picture, too. After a less than stellar start to the year, with two results of 23rd or worse impacting an average finish of 12.3 through the opening six rounds.
However, a flip switched on the tight and tumultuous street circuit in Detroit, where Rowe charged from 11th to finish second. With that followed up by his first win of the season at the 1.25-mile oval this past weekend, he climbed from seventh to fifth in the overall standings, 73 points behind championship leader Nikita Johnson (285-212).
“Yeah, for sure huge,” Rowe said. “Our program still needs to work on how we come out the box on road and street. I think we found a little something, no doubt, in Detroit that hopefully we take towards Road America and Mid-Ohio. No doubt the momentum is going to fuel us to keep up this performance.”
Reflecting back on his win, Rowe mentioned how the issue in qualifying, in which he made the self-inflicted mistake of running one more lap after the checkered flag and was thus penalized as a result, provided the extra motivation to set things right on race day.
“Yeah, for sure the whole strategy was changed in an instant,” he said. “(Saturday night) it was hard to not run through different scenarios in your head, different ways you’d approach this start, different ways the second and third quarter, even the last quarter of the race would go. Whether I was going to be up front, whether I was still going to be struggling to get by some guys.
“I knew if I just looked back at practice one and some of the things I found with the higher line, that was kind of what was going through my head constantly, literally in circles, right? I knew if I committed to that and had just the right determination and approach to it that everything would open up (in the race).”
That relentless nature continued all the way through the last lap, where Rowe set the fastest lap of the race.
“I just wanted the fastest lap,” he said. “I had everything in control. I needed the extra point, for sure.”
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