LONG POND, Pa. — It’s been a near picture-perfect week for Alex Bowman.
Last Sunday, he broke an 80-race winless streak at the Chicago Street Course, gambling on wet-weather tires to hold off Tyler Reddick’s frantic rally. This week at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway, he almost went to victory lane for the second time in a row.
Restarting second with 23 laps to go, Bowman nearly tracked down Ryan Blaney for the top spot, but ultimately lost pace in the closing laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race and came home third.
Obviously, Bowman would’ve much rather taken another victory. But he isn’t complaining, either.
“To come to a really normal race and come out with a solid top five is great,” Bowman said after the race. “I think we’ve had some good runs strung together earlier in the year, as well. Good to do it after a win, especially kind of a different win with a lot of strategy and rain and all kinds of different things going on last week.
“Definitely feels good to pull off a day like today.”
Qualifying sixth, Bowman ended up finishing the 30-lap first stage in the same spot, but crew chief Blake Harris didn’t necessarily want to be there. A caution for Noah Gragson in the middle of the stage put a bind in the No. 48 team’s plans, and they elected to stay out.
Bowman certainly wasn’t the only driver to stay out, though. The top nine cars didn’t pit, but long term, that decision put him behind for the afternoon.
“We were kind of put in an interesting spot there at the end of Stage One with all those guys that had stopped for fuel when that caution came out,” Harris explained. “We really kind of took our points there when we necessarily didn’t want to, and lost kind of double the track position that we had anticipated.”
Pitting for four Goodyears at the stage break, Harris found an avenue for some strategy. Ross Chastain crashed and brought out a caution on lap 54, and he called Bowman down for right-side tires.
That got Bowman to the end of Stage Two, where he finished seventh. After four tires, it was a similar strategy in Stage Three for Harris and company. During a lap 116 caution, Bowman took right-side tires along with most of the other leaders. Two of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott, got caught speeding, handing Bowman more track position.
After Ty Gibbs seemingly blew up on lap 133, Bowman had a chance to race for the win. He launched from second and hung with Ryan Blaney, who led the final 44 laps en route to victory, but eventually fell behind Denny Hamlin and took home third.
“I felt really good for probably two laps firing off on Ryan,” Bowman said. “Then I got a little too tight, kind of normal dirty air and let him get away. As soon as there was a little bit of distance between him and I, I just started sliding the right rear all the way through turn 3 and got the right rear super hot. Made Denny’s job pretty easy to get around us.
“When we come here, we run pretty well and we’ve got a lot of good finishes here. It would have been great to get a win, but definitely feels good to pull off a day like today.”
Bowman earned 43 points as he jumped Gibbs for 10th in the series standings. It was the first time he scored back-to-back top fives since Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway and Circuit of the Americas (Texas) in March.
With five races remaining in the regular season, the Tuscon, Ariz., native can feel the momentum.
“I think it’s certainly good for the team,” he said. “From my side of things, as I’ve grown up, I’ve tried really hard to be able to reset, even after rough weeks. But it does definitely make your week a little easier and momentum is definitely a little bit real.”
More than anything, Harris wants to prove that the Chicago victory wasn’t a one-hit wonder.
“Winning fixes everything,” Harris said. “Super happy with how this team’s performing, and not just to have a one-week fluke and continue to kind of ride the high week after week.”