KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Alex Bowman didn’t want to stand around pit road and “bitch” about a fifth-place finish in Sunday’s (May 11) NASCAR Cup Series race at Kansas Speedway – especially after only having one top-10 finish in the previous five races.
But he sure had an abundance of reasons to be a frustrated.
First off, he got a terrible night’s sleep. “I slept on my neck wrong last night, so I’ve been a little grumpy all day,” Bowman explained.
But the Hendrick Motorsports driver was really ticked off about what happened on the track.
After starting 21st, the No. 48 car had charged into top 10 early on. Then disaster nearly struck. Going down the backstretch, Bowman was running on the outside of Zane Smith when the No. 38 Ford veered right and forced Bowman hard into the wall.
“That’s the unfortunate part of racing these cars,” Bowman said of the incident. “Where the old cars get loose side by side, these cars get tight, guys just take off and the outside guy ends up in the fence.”
Bowman was incensed over his team radio, thinking his day was potentially done and the No. 48 was undrivable.
“It knocked the tow out so bad, my steering wheel moved so much I thought I was gonna drive down into turn 3 and smoke the fence,” Bowman explained, later adding his frustration was based “more (on) just how good we were before the damage.”
It turned out that Bowman’s day was far from over. But one of his teammates, William Byron, soon had his own problems.
On Lap 66, Byron’s right-rear tire gave out, forcing him to quickly dive to pit road. His problem came after multiple drivers suffered the same issue in practice on Saturday.
It was a concern for the No. 48 team, though Bowman wasn’t aware of Byron’s woes.
“I think as fired up as I was inside the race car, (crew chief) Blake (Harris) wasn’t going to tell me if we had issues going on,” Bowman joked.
Despite the damge to his car, Bowman ran in the top 10 for most of Sunday’s 267 laps. There was another close call as he had to navigate lapped traffic late in a stage. The Arizonian wasn’t happy about it.
“I’ve never had lapped cars that are three laps down mirror drive the shit out of you for the end of the stage,” Bowman said. “That was the craziest thing I’ve ever been a part of. I don’t know what we’re doing on that deal. Well, I know it’s pretty obvious what we’re doing.”
The culprit?
Rookie 23XI Racing driver Riley Herbst.
“The 35 about killed Brad (Keselowski) and I there at the end trying to help this teammate that was behind us,” Bowman said. “So I get it, we’re all racing and it’s part of it, unfortunately. It’s just like, ‘man, you’re three laps down. What are we doing?’ But you’ll have that. It’s big time auto racing, right?”
In the closing laps, Bowman raced as high as third before being overtaken by Ryan Blaney and Chase Briscoe. He came home fifth, earning his second top five and seventh top 10 of the season.
Weirdly, through 12 races Bowman has either finished in the top 10 (seven times) or finished 26th or worse (five times), with no in-between. He had finishes of 27th, 35th, 37th, seventh and 35th entering Sunday.
“This is the best we’ve been,” Bowman said. “The point standings (eighth) don’t show it and we haven’t won. The last month’s finishes certainly don’t show it. But for me going to the racetrack, the only place that we haven’t been fast was Darlington, and we were going to run top 10 until I smoked the fence.”
As Bowman talked, Hendrick Motorsports vice president of competition, Chad Knaus, stood a few feet away. With a smile, Knaus pumped his right fist in the air multiple times before reaching over and giving Bowman a high five.
“To be able to bounce back the way they did again, I think is showing the character of that team,” Knaus said.
“I’m a big fan of Alex’s,” Knaus later added. “I think that he’s a great young man. I think he’s a great driver. He’s got a great team. Blake (Harris) has really built that team up around him, and they’re taking things on one big chunk at a time. They’re not taking little bites.”
Daniel McFadin is a 10-year veteran of the NASCAR media corp. He wrote for NBC Sports from 2015 to October 2020. He currently works full time for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and is lead reporter and an editor for Frontstretch. He is also host of the NASCAR podcast "Dropping the Hammer with Daniel McFadin" presented by Democrat-Gazette.
You can email him at danielmcfadin@gmail.com.