Alex Bowman has a chance to do something special in the NASCAR Playoffs that begin Sunday at Darlington Raceway.
It won’t be easy. But if the 27-year-old Tucsonan can make it through the playoff gauntlet consisting of three rounds and 10 races over the next two months, starting with Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500, he’ll have a shot at the winner-take-all sweepstakes at Phoenix Raceway in November. This year marks the first time since 2002 that the final race of the year will be held away from Homestead-Miami Speedway.
“Trying to win a championship in Arizona, that’d be really special,” the Ironwood Ridge High School graduate said this week.
Bowman and the No. 88 team of Hendrick Motorsports are viewed as longshots among the sport’s 16 drivers, a sentiment that Bowman said can be attributed to his underwhelming performances during the summer races.
Bowman began the 2020 season full throttle, claiming five top-15 finishes in the first six races of the year and winning the Auto Club 400 in Fontana, California, on March 1. The COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on Bowman’s blazing start with a two-month shutdown, but he shook off the rust to finish second in NASCAR’s restart at Darlington in mid-May.
“Then (we) fell off really hard for the summer,” Bowman said.
In the 22 races since Darlington, Bowman has cracked the top 5 only once; he’s finished 20th or worse eight times. The results were puzzling given his reputation as one of NASCAR’s top young talents.
“Staying upbeat for me is a little tough when things aren’t going well,” he admitted. “The summer was rough on us for sure, but good runs for me cures that and running up front and contending for wins.”
“The summer was rough on us for sure, but good runs for me cures that and running up front and contending for wins,” said Tucsonan Alex Bowman.
The driver’s self-prescribed medicine seems to be having the desired effect at the right time. Bowman’s last two races in August, a fifth-place finish at Dover International Speedway and his most recent seventh-place finish at Daytona, have him in solid positioning both on and off the track.
Bowman said his team got back to the basics, “trying to identify why that happened, what we did wrong and how to get better over the last couple of weeks.”
He’s now back at Darlington Raceway to begin the NASCAR playoffs. It’s the ideal place to start.
“We’re going to be really good, but Darlington’s one that we’ve circled that we can be really strong at for sure,” he said.
Over the next two months, Bowman and the No.88 team will have to navigate three rounds of playoff series in order to advance to Phoenix Raceway. If he accumulates enough points during the 10 races, Bowman will make his way into the Championship 4, where the first driver out of the four to cross the finish line at Phoenix Raceway will be named the NASCAR Playoff Series champion.
Asked what it would be like to qualify for the championship race, Bowman said: “It’d mean the world to me.”
