Vicious Michigan Crash Extends Bowman’s Recent Skid

Alex Bowman (48) crashes during Sunday's FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan Int'l Speedway. (Nigel Kinrade/NKP photo)

BROOKLYN, Mich. – Another NASCAR Cup Series race featured another round of misfortune for Alex Bowman and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports team, a group seemingly stuck in free fall and unable to stop the proverbial bleeding.

Most of the disappointment is through no fault of their own, a mix of bad luck and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, Sunday’s FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan Int’l Speedway was a situation where the latter reared its ugly head.

Bowman started the day having qualified 16th, with a ways to go to try and get to the front. By the end of stage one, however, he was only going backward fast and closed out the stage in 32nd.

Unfortunately for Bowman and company, it only got worse from there.

Following an early stage-two caution on lap 60, the race restarted six laps later and Bowman found himself in the wall, and hard.

In the middle of turns one and two, contact between the No. 2 of Austin Cindric and the No. 41 of Cole Custer sent Custer’s Ford up into the No. 99 of Daniel Suarez, and also into Bowman.

The hit sent Bowman head-on into the outside wall, but thankfully, Bowman was able to get out of the car and walk to the ambulance under his own power. It also led to an 11-minute, 32-second red flag for repairs to the SAFER Barrier.

Bowman was checked and released from the infield care center with no issues, a sigh of relief considering his previous battles with both a concussion and a separate back injury in the past, before speaking to reporters regarding the frustrating skid he’s been on of late.

“It just looked like the No. 2 (Cindric) got into the No. 41 (Custer) or he was in a bad aero spot, something like that,” explained Bowman, who finished last in the 36-car field, of what he saw when the crash began. “The No. 41 got loose and at that point, being on the outside, when they get into you, you’re just along for the ride. Really quickly turned the car into the outside wall and it was a massive crash.

“I hate it for our No. 48 Ally Chevrolet team and everyone at Hendrick Motorsports. We just have to keep digging,” he added. “It’s been a really bad two months for us, but we just have to keep working hard.”

As a result of the crash, Bowman dropped from 45 points above the playoff cut line to just 13 points clear of the boundary, sitting 15th in the playoff standings and 13th in regular season points overall.

It’s Bowman’s seventh finish of 25th or worse in his last nine races, after five top 10 finishes in the first six events of the year, with the recent stretch “not representative of our team,” in Bowman’s words.

“We’ve had a lot of speed and a lot of good race cars,” said Bowman. “Obviously today, we were off from where we needed to be. But just the support that we have from Rick (Hendrick), Jeff (Gordon) and everybody at Hendrick Motorsports, they’ll give us the tools we need to get turned back around. We just needed to get pointed back in the right direction. We’re a much better race team than this.”

If there is one silver lining, Bowman’s lone win last year came at the Chicago (Ill.) Street Course, and the upcoming stretch of the Cup Series schedule has Chicago in July as well as other road course events, not to mention a regular season finale at Daytona (Fla.) Int’l Speedway that can always bring chaos.

Bowman’s career average finish of 15.28 on road and street courses is the best of all track types in his Cup Series tenure, which is a boon with the next race on the schedule being the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City.

Broadcast coverage of the Viva Mexico 250 is set for Sunday, June 15 at 3 p.m. ET, live on Prime Video, the Motor Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.