NASCAR CUP SERIES
PLAYOFF MEDIA DAY
SEPTEMBER 4, 2024
Alex Bowman, No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Camaro ZL1 – 12th in Playoff Standings
Victories: 1
Top-Fives: 6
Top-10s: 12
Laps Led: 14
Average Finish: 15.4
Stage Wins: 0
Of Note:
- The 2024 season marks Bowman’s sixth appearance in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs.
- Bowman has advanced to the Round of 12 in each of his NASCAR Cup Series playoff appearances – making it to the Round of Eight in the 2020 season to score a career-best sixth in the final standings.
- Bowman has one victory at two of the 10 tracks on the playoff schedule: Las Vegas Motor Speedway (one win) and Martinsville Speedway (one).
- Bowman’s eight career NASCAR Cup Series victories have come on every track configuration in which the series competes on: short track (Richmond Raceway, Martinsville Speedway), intermediate oval (Chicagoland Speedway, Auto Club Speedway, Dover Motor Speedway, Pocono Raceway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway) and road course/street course (Chicago Street Race).
ALEX BOWMAN, NO. 48 HENDRICK MOTORSPORTS CAMARO ZL1 – 2024 NASCAR Cup Series Playoff Media Day Highlights:
Your name is out there about what’s happening next year.. do you know your plans for 2025?
“Yeah, that rumor has certainly been annoying. Obviously my contract is through the end of 2026. All I can tell you is like what my bosses have told me, and that is that there are no plans to change anything. Yeah, rumors are just rumors. Hopefully they’ll get their announcements done so my rumors stop, obviously. Yeah, as far as I know, I’m driving the No. 48 next year.”
Is there any reason that you should doubt that? How do you feel?
“Yeah, I don’t think so. I trust my bosses and that’s what they’ve told me. So yeah, other than that, just focused on trying to be strong the next 10 weeks.”
You’ve had to deal with a lot this year, even in the past. Fair or not fair, how do you deal with that?
“Yeah, I mean for me – like that’s a rumor that I’ve heard for a month. It got to the point where I picked up the phone and called everybody, and everybody said, ‘absolutely not’. So, that’s really all I have to go on and I don’t have a reason to believe anything other than that. There’s no – oh, you need to do this to keep your job. Like it’s absolutely not.. everything’s fine.
Beyond that, we need to go run better. It’s been a miserable month. We haven’t executed on a high level at all, so we need to go run better the next 10 weeks. But we need to do that for us and our playoff run; for Ally and the No. 48 team. There’s no like – you need to do this to keep your job. As far as I know, I’m not worried about that at all.”
How does one turn things around? At the start of the playoffs, everyone says – hey, it’s a new season. Just because it’s a new season doesn’t mean the same things aren’t following you. How do you break that chain?
“I feel like we’ve been able to do that in the past, and honestly, a month ago everything was going pretty well. We had the crash at Indy. We crashed at Daytona. Obviously we had some issues last weekend (at Darlington). It’s been frustrating, but we’ve had some fast racecars sprinkled in there. Obviously we crashed at Michigan with another fast racecar. We just need to execute at a high level the next 10 weeks. We just need to buy in; have the whole team locked in and execute well.”
With the playoffs, obviously there’s a process you go through throughout each week of the season, in living your life and doing things. When you get into the playoffs, is there something that you cut out, or is there something you make sure you keep because of the potential stress and everything for 10 long weeks?
“Yeah, I don’t think you can change much. I think you kind of have to – the way our sport works, you kind of have to live the whole year that way. Certainly working super hard and kind of trying to do everything that I possibly can. But I feel like sometimes you do that and almost get worse. Just have to go do my thing and go from there.”
What’s a saying you hear from Blake (Harris, crew chief) that you hear often?
“I don’t really have a saying like that from him. But for me, things were tough at the start of the year. Talking to him, he’s like – you and I are the only two that can fix it. He said that, and then he brought it up again this week. So, I think just him and I are responsible for how the team is going to execute for the next 10 weeks. We need those guys to lock in and be all in for the next 10 weeks, for sure.”
Some might view you guys as an underdog or a potential Cinderella. Is that a way that you look at it, or is that the wrong way to look at it from your vantage point?
“Yeah, I mean I think that we need to improve where we’re at, for sure. We haven’t been where we need to be for the last little bit. Our season has kind of been broken up into streaks of really good runs, and then streaks of really bad runs. So, I think if we can get the streak of really good runs to fall well for the next 10 weeks, I think we can be in a really good spot. Yeah, I mean I think there’s no reason why we’re not capable of doing that. We just need things to go our way and we need to put our best foot forward.”
Are there any races you’re worried about in the playoffs?
“I think the superspeedway races, obviously, can be a big wild card. Watkins Glen has been pretty hard on us over the years, so we’re super focused on being better there. But beyond that, if we get rolling in the right direction, we can be good anywhere.”
What are the odds of you getting to Phoenix and compete for the championship?
“Yeah, I mean we need to improve what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been executing to make that happen. I think we’re capable and have the resources that we need to do that, it’s just a matter of going and doing it. Mr. H gives us the tools we need, so we have to go make it happen.”
When you’re breaking down the playoff rounds, the Round of 16 has a lot of drivers concerned. It seems to be one of the toughest rounds. Is that what you think or is there another round that you’re worried about?
“Honestly, I’m so week-to-week that I don’t even know what the next tracks are after the first round. Super focused on the Round of 16. And obviously, yeah – I think Atlanta, Watkins Glen and Bristol; there’s so many things that could happen. It’s pretty easy to have someone else ruin your day at two of those three. Yeah, just need to go execute at a high level, and go week-to-week from there.”
Mrs. H said she wanted all four cars in the Championship Four..
“Yeah, she wants that every year, but she made it very clear that we better make it happen. I think she said she ‘really, really, really, really, wants that’. Yeah, when she speaks, we listen, for sure.”
How would you characterize your regular season?
“Yeah, it’s been up-and-down. We’ve had streaks of really good runs. The last month, we’ve kind of been repeatedly kicked in the teeth. Excited to get the playoffs started. We’re a plenty capable race team, we just need to go out and do it.”
Do you look at it as a blank slate?
“A little bit. It would have been nice to carry some positive momentum into the playoffs. I feel like the first half of the summer, we had a better summer than normal. And then the second half of the summer, the wheels fell off. Definitely a little bit of a blank slate, but we’ll see what happens.”
Have you seen progression ramped up?
“Yeah, I mean it’s gotten crazy over the last couple of years, for sure. I think if we raced 10 years ago how we do now, we’d get out of the car and get our butts kicked. It’s changed a lot, right? There’s been change for everybody. I feel like I’m not the overly-aggressive, dirty racecar driver. The races have played out to really benefit the overly-aggressive, dirty racecar drivers. I’m trying to get myself there, for sure. Yeah, it’s definitely changed.”
Is that because of the current car?
“Yeah, I think passing has just become so ridiculously difficult that you have to get what you can; ruining someone else’s day to do it or whatever you need to do has just become part of it. Yeah, it’s just changed.”
You and Blake (Harris, crew chief) have had stretches of really, really good races. Are you feeling confident that you guys are going to hit that when you get to the playoffs?
“We better, right? The last month has been frustrating. We’re a plenty capable race team, so we need to go run well for the next 10 weeks. I feel like we’re plenty capable of doing that.”
Is there anything in particular that you’ve done behind the wheel the last month that has led to it, or do you think it’s just a rough stretch?
“Yeah, I mean really – I sped on pit road at Richmond and that hurt us a little bit, but we weren’t any good before that. Got loose and smoked the fence on that restart at Michigan, which cost us a top-eight finish. But other than that, we just haven’t been very good, honestly. Super frustrating to not be better than we’ve been, but we’ll keep digging at it.”
You said after Darlington that you guys just need to run better in the playoffs. How can you guys do that? Is it just getting the finishes, or is there some execution in there, as well, about bringing better cars?
“Both, for sure. We haven’t been very good lately. We need to qualify better. We need to execute better. I need to do everything on my end better. We need to be better on pit road. Like across the board, we need to be better. Yeah, I’ve made a couple mistakes over the last couple of weeks; sped on pit road at Richmond, crashed at Michigan. And then we’ve had some cars that we’ve struggled with and some things on pit road happened. Across the board, we need to be better. We’ve got 10 weeks to go and prove we can be better.”
The first round, everyone says it’s going to be wild. Is that a realistic expectation? You have Atlanta, which can go any which way. And then it seems like tires might be the story at Watkins Glen and Bristol.
“Yeah, the Watkins Glen thing is interesting because they said it was six seconds, and then they tested again last week and I heard two seconds. Yeah, I heard much less than we thought, but it’ll be interesting to see what actually happens. I feel like we always kind of never know. And then at Bristol, is the same thing going to happen or is it not going to happen? Yeah, it’s going to be interesting. Atlanta, it’s its own thing, so we’ll what happens.”
How have you and your crew chief discussed getting through the first round?
“Go execute at a high level every week. That’s really all we can do. Obviously at Atlanta, there’s a lot of things outside of our control that can happen. But we need to do our job at a high level; bring fast racecars, run up front, score stage points and make the right decisions on the race track.”
Do you expect 54 lead changes again at Bristol? It was the unknown there that was absolutely crazy and it wasn’t what anyone was expecting. Crew chiefs and engineers, they look at numbers and when it baffles their minds, everything is up in the air..
“Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see if the tire wear is like that again, right? It’s going to be a lot hotter. The race track will probably rubber up a lot more. We don’t really know until we go do it, especially with a concrete race track. It can change. The weather can change. It can go one way or another; not having the sun on it because it’s going to be a night race. It could be warm, but no sun. So yeah, it’s hard to say what it’s going to do. It has the potential to be absolutely as wild as it was the first time. And it also has the potential to be a completely normal Bristol race. I’m sure we’ll find out within the first 100 laps of the race, but until then, I don’t think we’re going to know.”
What makes Hendrick Motorsports so good at Watkins Glen?
“Yeah, I feel like I’ve been terrible there, so it’s hard to say. I feel like that’s one road course that I still have to kind of get ahold of a little bit. I think it started with – obviously Hendrick Motorsports on road courses has been really good for a long time. But Chase (Elliott) really got ahold of Watkins Glen and kind of developed all of our stuff to be really good there, kind of right off the bat. Yeah, trying to play catchup a little bit, but I’m excited to get back.”
Did the confidence you got from winning the street course at Chicago give you confidence in those styles of tracks where you do turn left and right?
“Yeah, I mean we’ve been really good on road courses the last couple of years. Obviously COTA and the ROVAL have probably been the two best. Sonoma, we’ve had good runs. We’ve never had a good finish. We’ve had a lot of stuff happen to us there. Watkins Glen has always been the one that I’ve just struggled to make pure pace at. Trying to really focus on getting better there. I wasn’t good at COTA the first year, and I wasn’t great at Chicago the first year. I focused on them and got better. So, there’s no reason we can’t do that at Watkins Glen, too.”
How did being the wheelforce guy for awhile help you become a better driver?
“I would be a better racecar driver right now if I raced full-time for those two years than if I didn’t, for sure. I think two years basically sitting on the couch is not beneficial for anybody, but staying in the car in 2017 a little bit and doing all those tests was better than sitting on the couch. Racing would have been better, but we didn’t race, so that was the next best thing.”
But did you learn something from working with the engineers and seeing it from that side of the sport that could help you down the road?
“A little bit.. like I spent a lot of time in the simulator and developed a lot of good relationships with those guys. But the wheelforce stuff is really more about just driving the car in a really consistent way to give those guys the best data that you can. Way different than just going out and running ten-tenths and trying to make the best pace you can. But at the same time, I’m sure there were a couple of things that I learned.”
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