Bowman pushed closer to elimination after another disastrous day at WWTR

Alex Bowman felt that his team had been doing a lot of things right in the lead-up to the NASCAR Cup Series postseason, but in two weeks it’s all unraveled.

“We’re just not doing anything right at all,” Bowman said after Sunday’s race at World Wide Technology Raceway. “Super unfortunate. There is really no excuse for it for any reason. It’s kind of dumb.”

Bowman and the No. 48 team finished 26th in the Enjoy Illinois 300, falling into an even more precarious position below the transfer spot into the next round. It was the second consecutive week the driver and team struggled with both the car and on pit road, ultimately finishing outside the top 20.

A slide up the racetrack during his qualifying lap put Bowman in the 25th starting position. It was slow going to make up ground at the beginning of Sunday’s race, with Bowman 18th at the end of the first stage. The day looked to be turning productive as he was running inside the top 10 after 100 laps, but then came a slow pit stop under a lap 135 caution.

Bowman was 24th at the end of the second stage, but again the team started to make up ground back toward the top 10 when he sped on pit road under his green flag pit stop with less than 50 laps to go.

“[Expletive],” Bowman summed up the day. “Yeah, just really poor execution on all angles. Bummer. I thought our car was OK once we were kind of toward the front half; we were just awful in the back, but what can you do? It’s super frustrating. It was just stupid to speed there, but it’s not like I ran over my lights or anything. I just got told to go too early.

“It’s frustrating. I don’t know – just a really [expletive] day on all accounts. All we can do is keep digging. A lot of people are working really hard to continue to be better. I thought, race car-wise, it was probably a step in the right direction once we got some air. We’ve just got to go to Bristol and go to work.”

The first race of the postseason, a week ago at Darlington Raceway, saw Bowman finish 31st with a car he described as slow, fighting track position, and a 40-second pit stop when the air hose was not plugged in beforehand.

“[My] guys are really fast,” said Bowman of the pit road issues. “They look really awesome in all the metrics, and they work really hard. It’s just the ones that blow up are really bad. It’s unfortunate. We've got to go to Bristol and keep working at it.”

Bowman is 35 points below a transfer spot going into the first elimination race of the postseason. It is mathematically possible to advance on points, but the scenario is much more straightforward if approached as a must-win.

“Nothing is ever straightforward around here,” he said. “That’s life.”

Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman Jeff Gordon acknowledged the No. 48 team can’t get things to go right on pit road, and it needs to be figured out. However, Gordon wasn’t writing off the group from advancing.

“They’re going to have to get a gift at Bristol,” Gordon said, “I’m not counting them out yet, but we’ll sit down and talk about what’s transpired the last couple of weeks and go from there.”

Gordon, when asked if there would only be conversations or if moves needed to be made on pit road, responded, “I guess we’ll see.”