Score one for the defending champion.
Joey Logano surged at the right time to take the lead in overtime and hold off a hard-charging Ross Chastain to win the Wurth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday (May 4). Logano’s first win of 2025 locks him into an opportunity to defend his Cup Series championship, and it is the 37th win of his Cup career.
There were several comers and goers throughout the race, thanks to 12 cautions and varying pit strategies throughout the day. Here are the primary pit road plotlines to emerge from The Lone Star State:
Two Tires Almost Make Michael McDowell’s Day
Green-flag passes proved to be hard to come by at Texas. Whenever a driver got in the wake of another driver’s car, it caused an aero push that made it hard to race side-by-side. Only a small handful of drivers, such as Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick, could make significant gains on track under green.
As a result of it being tough to pass on the track, many teams resorted to passing on pit road through strategy calls. In particular, two right-side tires was a popular decision by crew chiefs looking to obtain track position for their drivers.
Down the stretch, it was Travis Peterson, crew chief of the No. 71 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet, who opted for a two-tire pit stop on lap 219 to move his driver Michael McDowell up from 17th to second.
With that call, McDowell, who took the initial green flag in fifth, regained the track position that he lost due to multiple pit penalties earlier in the race. He made the most of it, not only staying up front, but taking the lead on multiple restarts to put himself in position to win.
But it was not meant to be for McDowell or the No. 71 team. On lap 264, just four laps remaining, McDowell surrendered the lead to Logano. One lap later, McDowell got loose and smacked the outside wall on the exit of turn two, ending his day and relegating the No. 71 to a 26th-place finish.
From the lead to the garage. #NASCARonFS1 pic.twitter.com/KGJQD7aAeH
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) May 4, 2025
“Obviously, we were on two tires, so we knew it was uphill battle,” McDowell told Frontstretch post-race. “We weren’t the best today, but we were fast enough to put ourselves in position.”
Though the two-tire gamble ultimately did not pay off, Peterson should still be commended for the bold strategy that put McDowell in contention in the closing laps.
William Byron’s Run Ruined by Pit Road Bumper Cars
Rolling off the grid from the outside pole, William Byron was poised to be a prime candidate for the race win at Texas. In the early going, that held true as Byron piloted the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to seventh place in both stage one and stage two.
However, Byron’s bid for the win went sideways at the beginning of stage three, and it all started on pit road. On lap 167, Byron was leaving his pit stall when he made contact with Cole Custer, who was trying to come to the service of his No. 41 pit crew.
While Byron still left pit road with the lead, the incident left him with damage to the right front of the No. 24. As the damage significantly hindered the No. 24’s aerodynamics, Byron quickly surrendered the lead and decided to pit on lap 201 to get off-sequence from the rest of the field. A caution for Jesse Love’s spin on lap 219 left Byron pinned one lap down.
Thanks to numerous restarts and attrition from late-race wrecks, Byron rallied to a 13th-place finish, but that still pales in comparison to where he and the No. 24 could have finished minus the contact with Custer.
Pit Crew of the Race: No. 34 Front Row Motorsports Ford
Unlike Byron, Todd Gilliland and the No. 34 Front Row Motorsports team was shaping up to be a non-factor on Sunday. Qualifying way back in 32nd, Gilliland struggled out of the gate, moving up just one spot to 31st by the end of stage one.
Looking to shake things up, No. 34 crew chief Chris Lawson rolled the dice by keeping Gilliland on the racetrack while the rest of the lead lap pitted under caution on lap 128.
Restarting from the top spot, Gilliland fell out of the top five in a hurry, but he hung in to finish stage two in 17th. On the surface, that doesn’t seem great, but Gilliland was in the 25th position prior to staying out, so it was a net gain of eight positions as a result of Lawson’s strategy.
In the end, Gilliland took the lemons of a poor qualifying effort and turned it into lemonade in the form of a near top 10, taking the checkered flag in 11th. Because Lawson’s pit call played a big part in Gilliland’s solid finish, the No. 34 team earns this week’s pit crew of the race award.
Look Ahead to Next Week
The Cup Series will go from one intermediate track to another with the running of the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway next Sunday, May 11. Race coverage begins at 3 p.m. on FOX Sports 1.
It is easier to pass at Kansas than Texas, so two-tire stops for track position may not be as prevalent next week. Next Sunday’s race will have a tough act to follow as last spring’s Kansas race produced an instant classic finish with Kyle Larson edging out Chris Buescher in the closest finish in Cup Series history.
Andrew Stoddard joined Frontstretch in May of 2022 as an iRacing contributor. He is a graduate of Hampden-Sydney College, the University of Richmond, and VCU. He works as an athletic communications specialist at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va.