CONCORD, N.C. – As Alex Bowman slipped through the final-corner chaos that saw his Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson and Martin Truex Jr. crash while racing for the win on Sunday, he had a fleeting thought coming to the checkered flag.
“I saw it all and thought, ‘hey, we might just end up being okay here,’” Bowman recalled in the middle of Charlotte Motor Speedway’s strangely-quiet pit road following the Bank of America ROVAL 400.
In fact, that’s exactly how it turned out for Bowman, who finished fourth in the first-ever road-course playoff event after a chaotic sequence of 109 laps around the 17-turn, 2.28-mile ROVAL layout.
His top-five result, combined with Johnson’s fall from second to eighth in the final rundown, helped Bowman to advance to the round of 12 in the playoffs by a scant two points.
It was a razor-thin and nerve-wracking margin, considering Bowman had entered the day only five points above the cut line to begin with and was flirting with elimination for much of the day on Sunday.
“We made our bed, though. It’s our own fault it was that stressful,” noted Bowman. “We should have had probably 20 more points than we had coming in … finished 19th at Vegas after running top five all day and were 12th at Richmond after running sixth-ish all day.
“I don’t know if you can ever breathe in this sport (with) as tight as the competition is.”
There were many who weren’t breathing easily in the early seconds after the checkered flag waved, with statisticians crunching numbers trying to figure out who was in and who was out.
Bowman’s focus wasn’t on that, however. He actually saw a scenario in which he might have won the race had things been slightly different.
“My initial thought was, ‘Dang, we should’ve been in front of the No. 12 [Blaney] if we hadn’t had such a poor restart,’” said Bowman. “It wasn’t too bad for us on that last lap, though. It was pretty open. Kudos to the No. 78 [Truex] … he could have driven right back across the track to get to the line and torn up a lot of stuff. I’m appreciative he had the mindset not to do that. That easily would have crashed us.”
Sunday marked Bowman’s third top-five finish of the season in his first year driving the No. 88 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for Hendrick Motorsports.
It also was a high-water mark for Bowman in terms of road-course performance, a discipline in which he’s traditionally struggled in the past. His previous best coming into the ROVAL was a ninth-place finish at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway in June.
“Pressure was the nature of the beast with how it was (out there) today,” Bowman said. “A lot of that comes from me not having a lot of confidence in myself with road racing. This was positive, though.”
While Bowman’s finish was a strong point, he was disappointed with the lack of solid opportunities to pass other cars during Sunday’s race.
“You could be two-and-a-half seconds faster than a guy and not get around him for two laps,” he said. “That part was super frustrating. No passing zones really, or at least my weakness in the inner-loop took away the only passing zone.
“I definitely struggled through the inner-loop quite a bit. Other than that, we were really fast through the infield section. We had a really strong car … so that was the biggest thing, just having a strong car to work with that made up for my weaknesses.”
While Bowman advanced by the skin of his teeth, Johnson wasn’t so lucky, losing out on a tiebreaker.
“It’s a big bummer for the No. 48 team,” he said. “It definitely sucks to see. Jimmie is a huge part of our organization … he’s so helpful, and I know he will continue to be that way. It stings not having him in it, but we’re still in the hunt and we’re going to fight hard.”
That motivation to keep fighting comes from those who predicted Bowman would be eliminated on Sunday, something the 25-year-old is very pleased didn’t happen.
“A lot of people said we were going to be one of the guys out, and to make it in and prove some of those guys wrong – it definitely makes me feel good.”
