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.”
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…
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