The Alex Bowman retribution tour is on this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, as the driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 will roll from the third starting spot in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series South Point 400, a week after he was disqualified from an 18th-place finish at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL and subsequently eliminated from Playoff contention.
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Bowman’s No. 48 car was found to be too light across the scales in post-race inspection last weekend, and while that rule is black and white in the rulebook, many expected Hendrick Motorsports to at least give appealing the disqualification a chance. However, the team opted to stand on the DQ and not bring a case to the National Motorsports Appeals Panel.
While it was an unfortunate end to what had been a solid run through the Playoffs for Bowman and the No. 48 team, the driver says he understood why an appeal wasn’t made.
“Yes, and no,” Bowman said in a media scrum at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when asked if he was surprised his team didn’t appeal the disqualification. “I think I understand where everybody was at on that. And yeah, I mean we just overstepped the margin, right? It’s pretty black and white at that point. So, yeah, it’s part of life.”
As far as the amount of weight Bowman’s car was short of the allotted weight laid out by the NASCAR Cup Series rulebook, we still don’t have a definitive answer, but on Saturday, Bowman indicated the amount was not a big enough difference that he would notice it from behind the wheel.
“No, the amount [of weight], there’s no way that you can feel it as a driver,” Bowman explained. Beyond that, the car was super bent after I launched over the curb. So, we kind of sucked the rest of the day, honestly. So, yeah, it’s certainly nothing I would have felt as a driver.”
A week removed from the heartbreaking end to his championship bid, Bowman seemed equally as frustrated by the initial 18th-place run at the ROVAL as he was by the DQ, as the ROVAL had been one of his best tracks statistically, heading into last weekend.
“Just, it wasn’t a good day for us in general. We didn’t run how we expected to go there and run,” Bowman explained. “And I damaged the car pretty badly, super early. Bummer I did that. I don’t know what happened from there, but yeah, nothing I would have felt.”
After his disqualification, Bowman experienced a rash of unlucky events away from the track.
The problems all started Sunday evening after the Bank of America ROVAL 400 following a phone call from his crew chief Blake Harris, who broke the news to the driver that there was a potential issue with their car in post-race inspection. Shortly after, Bowman’s phone buzzed with a notification from X. A post tagging him stated that the No. 48 car had been disqualified and that Bowman was now out of the Playoffs.
The driver knew he was in for a noisy night of notifications, and he was in no mood to read any of them. So, he took a drastic measure to quiet the noise. But Bowman’s decision didn’t go exactly to plan.
“I proceeded to throw my phone in the pool, and my phone proceeded to call 9-1-1 and tell them I was in a car crash, so, my Sunday night wasn’t very good, if I’m being honest with you,” Bowman said.
Ultimately, Bowman said his phone had no phone service at the bottom of the pool, so his phone detecting what it felt to be a car crash, didn’t lead to emergency services actually making a stop by his residence.
The driver estimates that he finally retrieved his phone from the pool roughly 20 minutes later, and there was some good news, his phone was still functioning thanks to modern smart phones being water resistant. However, the following morning, Bowman would encounter more bad luck.
“Honestly, it gets even better than that. The next morning, I walked out into my garage, and one of the windows on my car was cracked because of the temperature change or something, I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t throw my phone at the car, it was in the pool,” Bowman laughed.
To add final insult to injury, Bowman then noticed that the roof was leaking on his house. The driver had to then have that repaired this week before he could make the journey to Las Vegas.
“It’s been a week, man,” Bowman quipped.
While it’s been quite the week for Bowman, his fortunes could easily change this weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway — the site of the driver’s most recent NASCAR Cup Series win on an oval track in 2022.
