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

The Spire Motorsports driver started the Toyota / Save Mart 350 15th, ultimately picking up his second Top-5 effort of the year.

“We needed a little bit more pace out of our No. 71 Gainbridge Chevrolet,” McDowell said. “… Qualifying really hurt us. I think we had decent pace, but we weren’t fast enough to get around the good cars.”

The Top-5 was McDowell’s second 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 last week at the Chicago Street Course and led the opening 31 laps before a throttle cable relegated his No. 71 Chevrolet 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.

“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.

“Last weekend (at Chicago), we had a car that could win. Today, we were a little off. We’ll keep building on it.”

Dominic Aragon is currently the editor-in-chief for The Racing Experts.

From Grants, New Mexico, USA, Aragon started watching NASCAR in 2004 and has been covering the sport since 2009. Aragon is a 2012 graduate of Grants High School and a May 2016 graduate of the University of New Mexico with a B.A. in Mass Communications & Journalism. Aragon has worked in local and national media, as a musician, and an educator. He is co-author of the 2024 book “All of It: Daytona 500 Champion Tells the Rest of the Story” with racer Geoff Bodine.

Aragon, his wife Feliz, and son Christopher currently reside in Grants, New Mexico, USA.

You can reach Dominic at daragon@theracingexperts.net.