Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., didn’t know which groove he was going to choose in the final laps Friday at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala. But McDowell knew one thing for sure at crunch time in the 40-lap Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series main event: He wasn’t going to follow the race-long leader.

Indeed, when pole sitter Zack Mitchell of Enoree, S.C., kept his No. 57 in the low groove on the second-to-last lap, McDowell jumped to the outside entering turn three. A slower car hampered Mitchell’s momentum exiting turn four and McDowell swept past, taking command as the frontrunners took the white flag and leading the final lap for an $8,000 payday in just his second start of the season with his Shane McDowell Racing team.

"That’s an exciting race,” the 58-year-old McDowell said after capturing his second career Hunt the Front tour event. “That lapped traffic, Zack, I know I lost several (races) like that last year (being) in bad positions. (Running) second in those situations, you just go where (the leader’s) not, and so it's nothing with the lapped cars. They held their line, but you know, wherever Zack was gonna choose, I was gonna go somewhere else. It just worked out.”

McDowell joked in victory lane that he "didn't know what I was doing,” but his strategy worked on the third-mile oval that allowed multigroove racing in the first of two nights of HTF action.

“(Promoter) Adam (Stewart) worked on the racetrack there a little bit,” McDowell said. “It started getting one-laned and it widened out good there in the feature.”

McDowell’s victory was his first with new sponsors including Reece Monument, the longtime Tennessee-based race team backer that came aboard in 2025 to help replace former sponsor E-Z-Go for McDowell and his younger brother Shane, who co-owns the team with his wife Sara.

“I hope he's watching at home,” Dale McDowell said of sponsor Mike Reece. “It’s a big win for us, and we appreciate his involvement.”

Mitchell, who led 38 laps and saw McDowell go past on the outside with just over a lap remaining, hated to lose but didn’t mind that it was to a Hall of Fame driver.

"I come off to Dale after the race, and I was like, 'Damn Dale, you can't let me lead one more?’ But man, hats off to him,” Mitchell said. “If I'm gonna run second to anybody, it's good to run second to one of the greats. He's been at it a long time and I've looked up to him since I was a kid.