Two months ago, Alex Bowman picked up a season – and maybe career-altering – victory.
Using a little strategy in the wet, Bowman and crew chief Blake Harris gambled and successfully held off Tyler Reddick to win at the Chicago Street Course. The victory broke an 80-race winless streak plagued by back luck and multiple injuries that kept him out of the car.
A week later, Bowman nearly did it again at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway. While he ultimately finished third, the two-week stretch seemingly gave the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 team momentum heading into the final weeks of the regular season.
But starting with a crash at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, it’s been merely the opposite. The 31-year-old from Tucson, Ariz., hasn’t finished better than 16th over the last five races with wrecks sprinkled in at both Michigan Int’l Speedway and Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway, too.
Bowman feels like the speed is there. The team has just lacked execution.
“It’s been a miserable month. We haven’t executed on a high level at all, so we need to go run better the next 10 weeks,” Bowman said during Wednesday’s playoff media day. “A month ago, everything was going pretty well. We had the crash at Indy. We crashed at Daytona. Obviously, we had some issues last weekend (at Darlington).
“It’s been frustrating, but we’ve had some fast racecars sprinkled in there. We crashed at Michigan with another fast racecar. We just need to execute at a high level the next 10 weeks. We just need to buy in; have the whole team locked in and execute well.
“It would have been nice to carry some positive momentum into the playoffs. I feel like the first half of the summer, we had a better summer than normal. And then the second half of the summer, the wheels fell off.”
The ups and downs have been relatively common throughout Bowman’s career. Winning three times in the 2021 regular season, Bowman slid through the playoffs, resulting in a premature Round of 12 exit.
In 2022, Bowman finished outside the top 10 in 11 of 12 races during the summer before a concussion sidelined his season at Texas Motor Speedway. Last year, he struggled throughout most of the campaign after missing three spring races due to a broken back.
While he’s had these stretches in the past, Bowman hopes his team can forget the last month and a half.
“We need to improve where we’re at, for sure,” he said. “We haven’t been where we need to be for the last little bit. Our season has kind of been broken up into streaks of really good runs, and then streaks of really bad runs. So I think if we can get the streak of really good runs to fall well for the next 10 weeks, I think we can be in a really good spot.
“We need to qualify better. We need to execute better. I need to do everything on my end better. We need to be better on pit road. Like across the board, we need to be better. Yeah, I’ve made a couple mistakes over the last couple of weeks; sped on pit road at Richmond, crashed at Michigan. And then we’ve had some cars that we’ve struggled with and some things on pit road happened.”
Entering Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bowman is seeded 12th. But the Round of 16 this year presents some new challenges.
It’ll be the first time since its superspeedway-style reconfiguration that Atlanta is in the playoffs, adding a second drafting track (Talladega) to the final 10 races. Then, it’s a trip north to Watkins Glen (N.Y.) Int’l for the first-ever playoff race at the 2.45-mile road course. Goodyear is expected to bring a tire with multiple seconds of falloff over a run.
The only track left unchanged from last year’s opening round is Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway. The spring race also featured a tire with significant falloff, leaving drivers wondering if it’ll be the same in the fall.
“The Watkins Glen thing is interesting because they said it was six seconds (of falloff), and then they tested again last week and I heard two seconds,” Bowman said. “I heard much less than we thought, but it’ll be interesting to see what actually happens. I feel like we always kind of never know.
“And then at Bristol, is the same thing going to happen or is it not going to happen? Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. Atlanta, it’s its own thing.
“I think Atlanta, Watkins Glen and Bristol; there’s so many things that could happen. It’s pretty easy to have someone else ruin your day at two of those three. Just need to go execute at a high level and go week-to-week from there.”
Though the last month and a half has spiraled, Bowman still believes his team can shake it off and go on a run.
“We’re a plenty capable race team, so we need to go run well for the next 10 weeks,” he said. “I feel like we’re plenty capable of doing that.”