May 4, 2025
Michael McDowell of Spire Motorsports will start this week's Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway in the fifth position. Sunday will mark the second time ever in McDowell's Cup career that he will start inside the top five at this track. In 26 starts at Texas, McDowell has six top-20 finishes, including three of his last four Cup events at the site. Through 10 races so far in 2025, McDowell has seven top-20 finishes, an average finish of 18.0, and has collected positive Place Differential six times. In practice for this week's race, McDowell ranked 12th in overall lap averages while displaying top-10 speeds in all categories. Although McDowell's practice speeds looked great, he does have low upside from his starting position, and his equipment is not as great as that of other teams. Utilize the No. 71 Chevrolet driver only in tournaments as a low-value contrarian option for DFS this week.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 27, 2025
Spire Motorsports driver Michael McDowell will start 14th for this week's race at Talladega Superspeedway, the Jack Link's 500. This will mark the fourth consecutive week this season where McDowell will start a race inside the top 15. In 28 prior Talladega races, McDowell has eight top-20 finishes, including four of the last eight Cup events at the site. In the first nine races of the 2025 season, McDowell has six top-20 finishes, including top-15s at Daytona and Talladega earlier in the year. McDowell's starting position does make him better suited for tournament lineups compared to most in his salary range due to his lower upside. However, McDowell is worth taking a shot due to his overall positive history at tracks that involve drafting.
--Sean Engel - RotoBallerSource: DriverAverages.com
April 13, 2025
Short tracks have typically been Michael McDowell's Achilles heel throughout his career but he does seem to have figured something out at Bristol recently with the Next Gen chassis. Although he has still never led a lap here, he started 4th and finished 6th in the 2023 Bristol Night Race and ran in the top ten consistently. In his other three starts with this car, he has finished 11th with three top 15 average running positions. Now this time, he has qualified 13th. Although his two Spire Motorsports teammates Carson Hocevar and Justin Haley both outqualified him and Hocevar will likely outrun him, based on his recent history McDowell seems more likely to maintain his position than Haley. However, he's starting too well to earn many Place Differential points and likely won't be fast enough to lead or collect fastest laps, so he has little DFS value.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
April 6, 2025
Michael McDowell outqualified both of his Spire Motorsports teammates on Saturday and starts 10th for Sunday's race at Darlington. His record is very close to Ricky Stenhouse Jr.'s in that his only two top-10 finishes came in the two attrition-heavy races in 2022, where his average running positions of 18th and 11th were substantially worse than his finishing positions of seventh and sixth. In all likelihood, McDowell will finish worse than he starts and he isn't likely to score either laps led or fastest lap points since he has never led at the track. The difference is McDowell qualified substantially better than Stenhouse and costs $100 more, so he is even less valuable than Stenhouse, who wasn't that valuable himself. He should definitely be avoided.
--Sean Wrona - RotoBallerSource: Racing Reference
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