CONCORD, N.C. – Somewhere in the midst of an 80-race winless skid, Alex Bowman learned.
He learned never to take success for granted. He learned the value of living in the moment. He learned just how good a victory bourbon could really taste.
“When we won (Las) Vegas (Motor Speedway) in ’22, we had won quite a bit leading up to that,” Bowman explained. “We had won four races in ’21 and Vegas was really early in ’22 and we got back super late and we’re like, ‘Oh, we’re not going to celebrate this one. We’ll celebrate the next one. We’re going to focus on Phoenix.’ And for two years, I was like, ‘Dang, we needed to celebrate that one.’ You’ve got to celebrate all of them. So, we made up for it, in one night for sure.”
Bowman was referring to the afterparty following the No. 48 Ally Racing team's visit to victory lane at the Chicago Street Course in July. The win locked Bowman into the playoffs where he and the other 15 postseason eligible drivers will start their respective pursuits of a NASCAR Cup Series title on Sunday at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
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From the outside looking in, maybe it’s easy to label Bowman and his team an, "underdog," or a, "Cinderella," entering this postseason. After all, Bowman resides on the cutline tied for 12th entering the first of three Round-of-12 events and it hasn’t been a kind last five weeks with the team finishing no better than 16th since a third-place showing at Pocono on July 14.
But there’s plenty of reason for optimism here and there’s plenty of reason to believe that Cinderella’s purple Ally Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 will never turn back into a pumpkin.
And it all goes back to that learning point.
So, why can Alex Bowman win a Cup Series championship in 2024?
Well, that answer is multifaceted. But first, because just maybe, he and his team are finally catching up to the rest of the pack in the nick of time.
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Since the introduction of the Next-Gen car at the beginning of the 2022 season, Bowman has missed eight races due to injuries – five in 2022 and three last season. Sure, eight races out of 98 may not seem like a whole lot, but when it coincides with accumulating data for a brand new race car, those absecnes are amplified.
Add in a new crew chief in Blake Harris, who took over at the beginning of last season, and it’s understandable that maybe the 48 team is just starting to level the playing field with the competition.
But no matter what, Hendrick Motorsports vice chairman and four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jeff Gordon believes that the driver of the 48 has all he needs to get the job done.
“They’re a team that is still searching for some of those key elements and pieces to make them complete but Alex … when the pressure is on – either it’s a must win or he’s got the lead and he has one of the toughest competitors breathing down his neck – he delivers,” Gordon said. “That tells you a lot about him as a person, him as a competitor and them as a team. So, you can’t count them out by any means.”
And there’s data to back that up.
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Bowman has a pair of wins at tracks in the playoffs – the one at Las Vegas and one at Martinsville Speedway.
But there’s more to be encouraged about when diving into those eight career victories, primarily, the fact that each came at a different kind of race track.
In fact, it’s difficult to imagine a much more diverse set of tracks than those that in which Bowman has gone to victory lane. It’s a list that includes the aforementioned Las Vegas (1.5-mile tri-oval) and Martinsville (0.5-mile, flat short-track) as well as Richmond Raceway (0.75-mile short track), Pocono Raceway (2.5-mile triangle), the now-defunct Auto Club Speedway (2-mile D-shaped oval), Chicagoland Speedway (1.52-mile tri-oval), Dover Motor Speedway (1-mile, high-banked, concrete oval) and, as of this year, the Chicago Street Course (2.14-mile street circuit).
No, that docket doesn’t include a victory at a superspeedway, at least not yet. But since the beginning of 2021, among drivers to have made at least 12 starts, Bowman is eighth in terms of average finish at 17.1.
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And the No. 48 team has shown championship mettle this season. Not always, but in glaring spurts, most notably a stretch in which Bowman ripped off eight top-10 finishes in 10 starts from Bristol Motor Speedway through the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte motor Speedway.
For Bowman, he has little time or use for labels or perception. When asked about the Cinderella angle and running well over the 10 playoff races, he simply replied, “… there’s no reason why we’re not capable of doing that. We just need things to go our way, and we need to put our best foot forward.”
Gordon agreed. And whether those from the outside want to view a potential playoff run as a shocking or not, nobody within the Hendrick Motorsports organization would be surprised.
“I think if they can execute and get the momentum on their side, clean up a few things they’re working on to make the team stronger, I think they can surprise a lot of people and go very deep and even make it to Phoenix,” Gordon said.