According to Alex Bowman, NASCAR Cup playoffs ‘a little frustrating’ so far

This is not how Alex Bowman envisioned the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs playing out – starting each round with a large hole to dig out of.

Bowman’s 2021 season had been a watershed moment for him.

This season, he took over the famed No. 48 Chevrolet at Hendrick Motorsports, made famous by seven-time Cup winner Jimmie Johnson, and won three races, a career high.

As a result, he began the 16-driver playoffs as the sixth seed, only six points behind reigning Cup champion and teammate Chase Elliott.

Unfortunately, Bowman has had a poor start to the playoffs, finishing 26th in the first round on Sept. 5 at Darlington, S.C., and 22nd in the second round last Sunday at Las Vegas.

“I feel like last year we had a really great playoff run. This year we’ve kind of had the opposite of what we had last year. It’s definitely been a little frustrating,” Bowman, 28, said.

“I know we have the tools we need to get the job done, and I’m confident we’ll have fast race cars. But I was really confident before we went to Las Vegas as well, and obviously that didn’t work out very well for us.”

Bowman was able to claw his way back into contention in the first round, finishing 12th in Richmond, Va., and fifth in Bristol, Tenn., allowing him to escape the removal of the first four drivers from further title contention.

He faces a similar battle to progress out of Round 2 in Las Vegas on Sunday, but the races remaining – Sunday in Talladega, Ala., and the following weekend on the Charlotte Roval – are rife with uncertainty.

While Hendrick cars have been among the fastest on NASCAR’s superspeedways in recent years, Bowman has wrecked out two of the three races this season and finished seventh in the other.

“The biggest stress point for me is like trying to make the right decisions to make it to the end of the race (on Sunday). It’s really difficult to do, no matter how good of a speedway racer you are,” he said.

“Just trying to make the right decisions there and the right calls. Hopefully we’ll end up towards the front there at the end of the day. It’s definitely pretty tough.”

The race on the Charlotte Roval on Oct. 10 – one of the most difficult of the seven road courses on the schedule this year – will be no less difficult.

“I would just say that it really doesn’t have any room for error. It’s a tough place to get around,” Bowman said of the Roval. “Once you start pushing, if you make any mistakes, they tend to bite you pretty hard. I’ve been guilty of that there.

“It’s just really easy to get yourself in trouble and overdrive a corner and tear something up. So, I feel like that’s what really makes it a wild card. You have a lot of mistakes from people that you may not normally see.”

It will be difficult for Bowman to accumulate enough points in the next two races to survive the next round of eliminations, but a win in either one assures him a spot in the semifinal round regardless of his points position.

“I’m really confident that we’re going to have a really fast race car. We always do. The guys do a great job on our superspeedway cars, and we show that each and every year,” Bowman said.

“Not super confident that my 39 best friends are going to make the best decisions all day to put me in a great spot, but at the same time, we’re all in the same situation and just go race and do what we can.

“So, I’m going to do my best to put myself in the best position I can. I feel like we need to be aggressive all day and go try and win the thing, so that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

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