Michael McDowell scores highest finish of NASCAR Cup season at Sonoma

Michael McDowell picked up his highest finish yet in the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season finishing fourth Sunday at Sonoma Raceway.

The Spire Motorsports driver started 15th in the Toyota / Save Mart 350 but finished the race with his second Top-5 effort of the year.

“We needed a little bit more pace,” McDowell said. “Qualifying really hurt us. I think we had decent pace, but we weren’t fast enough to get around the good cars.”

McDowell now has two Top-5 finishes in the last five races, tying his career-high for Top-5 finishes in a single season.

Additionally, McDowell led three laps in the race, leading laps for the second consecutive week.

McDowell started second at the Chicago Street Course. He led the opening 31 laps before a throttle cable relegated him to a 32nd-place finish.

Yet, if McDowell makes the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs, doing so without a victory may not be feasible.

With six races before the playoffs, McDowell is 70 points behind the cutline for the post-season. The maximum points a driver could gain in a race is 60.

McDowell and crew chief Stephen Doran did their best to go for that win Sunday. Doran brought McDowell to pit road when the fuel window opened, with 47 laps to go. It put him on a strategy to stay out and stretch his fuel, which worked — until Shane van Gisbergen swept him up two laps later.

After pitting for fresh tires under a late caution, McDowell could only get back to fourth.

“We salvaged a top-five day, but that’s not what we need. We all know what we need to do, and we just weren’t quite good enough to do it today. But this is part of the process. You have good weeks and bad weeks,” McDowell said. “Last weekend (at Chicago), we had a car that could win. Today, we were a little off. We’ll keep building on it.”