Since his debut as a Cup Series crew chief in 2015, Ives has worked to build a winning culture on his side of the race shop.
It took only 10 races for Ives and Earnhardt to win together, but it took the Ives-Bowman pair 56 races — until the summer of 2019 — to visit victory lane, when Bowman dusted the field at Chicagoland Speedway. The duo returned to the winner’s circle last March at California’s Auto Club Speedway and won again in April at Richmond (Va.) Raceway and in May at Dover (Del.) Int’l Speedway.
How will the rest of this year make those dry spells seem like the distant past?
Bowman believes the answer lies within the No. 48 race shop.
“Greg has stepped up and kind of identified some areas that he can help me in the race car, whether it’s on the radio, giving me more information, helping me understand things, or telling me things I can do differently, what he sees on the driver data and stuff like that,” Bowman said. “I feel like we’ve learned some (ways) that he can help me. It’s definitely showing.”
Continuity has played a role in Bowman’s ascent to the catalog of NASCAR’s most prominent young stars. Certainly, driving cars made famous by predecessors Johnson and Earnhardt doesn’t hurt. Nor does having a stable of skilled teammates — William Byron, Kyle Larson and defending series champion Chase Elliott — available for a debrief on any weekend.
Elliott has the popularity and the hardware his three teammates covet.
Byron and Larson, however, were the first Hendrick drivers to win this season. Bowman’s best bet in the first seven races was his third-place effort at Atlanta.
A pattern developed during the early stages of the season: One or two Hendrick cars would run up front regardless of the type of track on which they were racing. If it was a 1.5-mile intermediate track, though, all four could be found in the top 10.
While having fast teammates makes Bowman’s challenge to stand out a bit tougher, he has the reassurance that each of his Hendrick counterparts has no inherent advantage in terms of equipment.
“I feel like everybody at Hendrick Motorsports has the same tools,” Bowman said. “What each team chooses to do with those tools is on them. All four teams work extremely close together. The team does a really, really good job of working together and bringing the best product to the race track that they can.
“I feel like every crew chief has their own interpretation, every engineer has their own interpretation of the data and the tools we have at (Hendrick Motorsports). There are differences in all four cars,” Bowman added. “It doesn’t matter if you think you’re showing up the same as a teammate, different teams just kind of do things just a little bit differently, right? Little things add up at these events. … When we struggle a little bit, our teammates are out front. We can go to them and lean on them, which is great. I’m glad that we have some really fast teammates to lean on.”
Make no mistake: Bowman wants to be the man his teammates approach for advice — not the other way around. Aside from Elliott, Bowman’s then-No. 88 car — the team roster carried over to the No. 48 — performed better than Hendrick’s other two cars during last year’s playoffs.
“I think we scored the second-most points during the playoffs, or at least until the very last race,” Bowman said. “We all ended the year pretty strong. I feel like that’s carried over.”
Even, he added, in the midst of multiple shake-ups within the organization.
“I feel like, any time you kind of move people around, have some new faces, whether it’s Kyle (Larson), a new driver on the No. 5, or Rudy (Fugle), a new crew chief on the No. 24, typically that sparks positive things pretty quickly,” Bowman offered. “I feel like they both have been great additions. But I really think (performance) just stems from ending last year so positive, continuing the positive momentum.”
Bowman is reminded of the No. 48 car’s success every time he walks into Hendrick’s headquarters. It didn’t matter who was the first to drive the No. 48 after Johnson.
Comparisons to the only man to win five straight Cup Series titles were bound to be made.
For his part, Bowman hopes the No. 48’s legacy isn’t over — that the torch has merely been passed, and the question he’s heard so often will soon fade into oblivion.