{"id":61663,"date":"2025-07-13T07:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61663\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T07:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T07:27:12","slug":"william-sawalich-shakes-off-rough-nascar-xfinity-season-with-first-top-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/61663\/","title":{"rendered":"William Sawalich shakes off rough NASCAR Xfinity season with first top-5"},"content":{"rendered":"

SONOMA, Calif. \u2014 William Sawalich shook off what has been a rough rookie NASCAR Xfinity Series season with his first career top-5 finish Saturday at Sonoma.<\/p>\n

In 21 Xfinity Series starts prior to the weekend, Sawalich amassed an average start of 11.5 and a pair of poles. While a fifth-place start boosted that at Sonoma, Saturday presented 79 laps of hurdles considering his career average finish of 24.3 and just seven top-15 finishes in 21 races.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photo by James Gilbert\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Saturday started smooth and maintained. Sawalich pitted before each stage break and found himself in third behind perennial frontrunners Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen for the final restart with 30 laps to go.<\/p>\n

As the run began, Sawalich became the only driver to get between Zilisch and SVG \u2014 albeit for a couple of laps. While SVG and Zilisch gained 13 seconds on Sawalich, Sawalich gained four seconds on the rest of the field and finished third.<\/p>\n

The third-place finish capped off a successful weekend for Sawalich. A day before, he won the ARCA West race in a thrilling three-wide photo finish.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great weekend for us,\u201d Sawalich said. \u201cIt was a great day. Our 10 lap speed was comparable to SVG, if not better. We just couldn\u2019t keep up with them but we didn\u2019t make any mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

No mistakes meant Sawalich brought home his first top five finish in his Xfinity Series career. He also made history, earning the highest Xfinity finish in series history for a Minnesota driver. He bested his own mark \u2014 sixth in Mexico City four weeks before.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely feels good to put together a good race, no mistakes, no penalties. It\u2019s something we can build off of,\u201d Sawalich said.<\/p>\n

While Sawalich is out of the playoff hunt on points, three of his four top-10 finishes have come on road course. Before the playoffs begin, the Xfinity Series will visit Watkins Glen on Aug. 9 or Portland on Aug. 30 where Sawalich may be a favorite to win and get into the playoffs.<\/p>\n

\"\"#18: William Sawalich, Starkey-Sound Gear Toyota Camry<\/p>\n

\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.<\/p>\n

A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.<\/p>\n

Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick’s final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen’s stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years \u2013 as well as up-and-coming drivers’ stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.<\/p>\n

Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SONOMA, Calif. \u2014 William Sawalich shook off what has been a rough rookie NASCAR Xfinity Series season with…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":61664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-61663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114844745972021232","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}