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Up to Speed: Alex Bowman Versus the Round of 12

After Saturday night’s (Sept. 21) race at Bristol Motor Speedway ended, Alex Bowman got another question about the rumors of his potential departure from Hendrick Motorsports.

Parker Kligerman, in his role as an NBC pit reporter, asked Bowman if his strong start to the playoffs was a statement by him and the No. 48 team. Bowman’s response?

“Talk. They’ll keep talking. I’m not worried about it.”

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Indeed, if Bowman keeps up his current pace, the talk around him is going to shift into how he has become a championship contender. That is not a designation that most people would have given him earlier this year. Even after a victory in the Chicago Street Race punched his ticket to the playoffs, Bowman lagged behind his Hendrick teammates in overall points for most of the regular season.

Yet since the playoffs began, Bowman has come alive.

He ran near the front of the field all afternoon at Atlanta Motor Speedway, collecting 16 stage points on his way to a fifth-place finish. The next race at Watkins Glen International ended with a disappointing 18th-place result, but stage points once again kept the No. 48 afloat.

With a 41-point edge over the cut line going to Bristol, all Bowman really needed to do was avoid disaster. However, he positioned himself for another great race by winning the pole. He led the first 32 laps before Kyle Larson took over the lead and went virtually unchallenged the rest of the way. Still, 13 more stage points and a ninth-place finish gave Bowman 120 points for the Round of 16, more than any other driver. Despite starting the playoffs on the bubble, the No. 48 team was able to easily advance.

However, the Round of 12 is up next and, traditionally, it has been Bowman’s Kryptonite. In five previous playoff appearances, he has been knocked out in the second round four times. Only in 2020 did Bowman survive elimination and advance to the third round. Even with different combinations of tracks, and different competitors chasing the championship, luck never seems to be on Bowman’s side during this part of the playoffs.

In 2018, his first full-time season with Hendrick, Bowman qualified for the playoffs for the first time. He was the final driver to get in on points, and without any career wins or postseason experience, most fans assumed that he would be out after the first round. But as other playoff drivers faltered in the first few races, Bowman stayed the course and drove to an impressive fourth-place finish in the inaugural race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL.

Advancing over superstars like Jimmie Johnson and Denny Hamlin showed that Bowman could bring some speed to the playoffs.

The trouble was that Bowman had not earned any playoff points, so when the grid reset for the Round of 12, he started 13 points below the cut line. That alone did not put him at an enormous disadvantage, but a crash at Dover Motor Speedway the following week did. Another accident at Talladega Superspeedway dropped Bowman even further below the cut line. A ninth-place result at Kansas Speedway in the third week was not nearly enough to make up the difference and Bowman’s underdog playoff run came to an end.

A year later, Bowman’s postseason felt like the second verse of the same song. He prevented a first-round elimination with another fantastic drive at the ROVAL, this time to second place. The Round of 12 points reset dropped Bowman to one point below the cutoff, a deficit he easily made up after a third-place finish at Dover.

The next week, it all came unraveled at Talladega.

With four laps to go before the end of stage 2, Bowman leaped into the lead going down the backstretch. He tried to throw a block on a rapidly closing Joey Logano, but the move came too late. Logano booted Bowman out of the way, sending him spinning back across the track, triggering a 10-car pileup. A week later at Kansas, Bowman’s 11th place was respectable, but just not enough to make up for the points lost at Talladega. The Round of 12 got him for the second time.

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When the postseason began in 2021, it seemed like Bowman was in his best position yet to make a deep run. He advanced to the third round the year before and already scored three wins in the regular season, giving him more playoff points to fall back on. Things got tense for the No. 48 team when Bowman found himself on the bubble two races in, but a top five at Bristol got him through the first round.

Then came the Round of 12, and things fell apart again.

First, the No. 48 team’s pit strategy backfired at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, leaving Bowman 22nd. Another crash at Talladega put Bowman in a must-win situation for the round’s final race, now at the Charlotte ROVAL. However, the road course did not save his title hopes this time. With a 10th-place finish, the No. 48 team was eliminated. Bowman later won a race in the Round of 8, a victory that would have advanced him to the championship race if he was still in title contention.

Bowman’s Round of 12 elimination from the 2022 playoffs was simply awful luck. A crash in the round’s first race at Texas Motor Speedway left him with a concussion, and Bowman was not able to return to the car until the final race of the year. Last season, a back injury kept him out of the car for several races and contributed to him missing the playoffs for the first time since joining Hendrick’s team.

Now that Bowman has another shot at the playoffs, how can he avoid a fifth Round of 12 elimination?

One obvious answer is to escape the crashes at Talladega, which have had a major impact on his other postseason runs. However, what made the 2020 playoffs more successful for Bowman was how he strung top 10s together almost every week. His postseason did not rely on a heroic run at the ROVAL or piling up victories, it was simply solid points racing through the final weeks of the season. As much as NASCAR’s leadership likes to think that it has killed off points racing as a strategy, it can still be quite effective in the playoffs. If only a maximum of three drivers can advance to the Round of 8 by winning, points obviously matter to the other five.

Bowman and the No. 48 team have already taken a points-minded approach to the playoffs, a strategy that allowed them to lock into the second round before Saturday night’s race even concluded. If they can dodge trouble at Talladega, stack up as many stage points as possible, and finish in the top 10, Bowman will advance to the third round whether he has a win or not. Perhaps then, all that talk will quiet down.

Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.


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Echo

As far as Bowman’s ride, I think I’ll take Jeff and Rick’s word over tj Majors and other Nascar gossipers.

Ted

Hendrick probably wants to use Haley as a back-up if one of there other drivers gets injured again. Although, If does end up switching out Haley for Bowman, the 7 is not a half bad ride,… all three cars got a top 10 at Watkins Glenn. 🤔🤷🏼‍♂️