By: Zach Catanzareti, Staff Writer
When chaos erupted coming to the checkered flag, all the points math in the world couldn’t keep up.
For Alex Bowman, he entered Sunday’s Bank of America Roval 400 only five points ahead of the playoff cutoff line.
And with the elimination race landing on the debut of the Charlotte ROVAL, Bowman was not a name thrown into the hat for potential race winners. In fact, Bowman himself was under pressure, with the course offering a whole new challenge in his first-ever playoffs.
“That’s just the nature of the beast with how it was today,” Bowman said. “A lot of that comes from me not having confidence in myself with road course racing.”
Confidence has been in a slow progression for Bowman, who entered Sunday with only two top-five finishes in his first year in Hendrick Motorsports’ No. 88.
“We made our bed. It’s our own fault it was that stressful,” he said. “We should have had probably 20 more points than we had coming in, finished 19th at Vegas after running top five all day, 12th at Richmond after running sixth-ish all day.
“I don’t know if you can ever breathe in this sport as tight as the competition is.”
There was no breathing up front for the win, as both Martin Truex Jr. and Jimmie Johnson crashed out of the track’s 17th and final corner, giving the win to third-place Ryan Blaney. The accident advanced Bowman to fourth place, his best-ever road course finish in Cup.
“My initial thought was, ‘Dang, we should’ve been in front of the No. 12 [Blaney] if we didn’t have such a poor restart,'” he said. “It wasn’t too bad for us on that last lap. 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.”
Though the day had a happy ending, a top five and a spot in the Round of 12, it still had its low points. First was the track, which offered little room for passing opportunities.
“You could be two-and-a-half seconds faster than a guy and not pass him for two laps,” he said. “That part was super frustrating. No passing zones really, at least my weakness of 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.”
Another rough point Sunday came with his teammate Jimmie Johnson, who wrecked out of second place coming to the line, falling to eighth place and out of the playoffs for 2018. His absence is already felt in the HMS camp.
“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, so helpful, and I know he will continue to be that way. It stings not having him in it.”