CONCORD, N.C. – Despite qualifying 15th, Alex Bowman was forced to start Sunday’s race at Dover International Speedway at the rear of the field due to inspection issues.
“That didn’t help us any,” Bowman said of starting at the back.
But early on, the cautions in Sunday’s race looked like they might play out in the driver’s favor.
The No. 88 team took advantage of a quick caution on Lap 4, using the opportunity to take a fresh set of tires since Bowman was already near the back of the pack. When another caution flag flew on Lap 21, Bowman stayed out on the track to take over the race lead.
“We played some pit strategy and got the lead and led for a while on older tires,” he said. “Then we just had to pit and nobody else had to pit, so it just got us off-sequence and stuck two laps down.”
Bowman held the lead at the “Monster Mile” for 26 laps, but he fell back once those cars with fresher tires eventually caught him. And when he was forced to make a green-flag stop in order to get enough fuel to make it to the end of Stage 1, he fell off the lead lap and never recovered.
“We worked really hard to try to make progress but just weren’t able to make it happen,” Bowman said.
He felt the No. 88 team performed well enough to earn a top-10 or top-15 result, but the cautions didn’t materialize at the right times to get the driver his laps back.
Bowman battled to take home a 23rd-place to finish, and though he was hoping for more, he was impressed with his team’s performance under the circumstances.
“Just got off on pit sequence there and there was no coming back from it,” he explained. “I feel like we had a solid, top-10 race car, but you just can’t make up two laps without some help. There weren’t very many cautions today and it’s a bummer because we had a decent race car. Proud of my guys.”