NASCAR CUP SERIES
BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY
TEAM CHEVY POST-QUALIFYING REPORT
APRIL 12, 2025
Bowman, Stenhouse Jr. Give Chevrolet a Front-Row Sweep at Bristol Motor Speedway
TEAM CHEVY UNOFFICIAL TOP-10 STARTING LINEUP:
POS. DRIVER
1st – Alex Bowman
2nd – Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
3rd – Kyle Larson
8th – AJ Allmendinger
9th – Carson Hocevar
10th – Justin Haley
- For the second time this season, Alex Bowman and the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet team will lead the NASCAR Cup Series to the green flag from the pole position. Posting top-10 speeds on the final practice leaderboard, the 31-year-old Tucson, Arizona, native went on to lay down a best lap of 14.912 seconds, at 128.675 mph, in his Chevrolet to earn the pole position for tomorrow’s Food City 500.
- The pole – Bowman’s seventh all-time in his NASCAR Cup Series career – marks his second in the division at “The Last Great Colosseum”, with the Hendrick Motorsports driver also earning the pole in the series’ most recent visit to the Tennessee venue in Sept. 2024.
- Bowman’s pole-winning effort marked Chevrolet’s fifth NASCAR Cup Series pole of the 2025 season; the manufacturer’s 41st all-time at Bristol Motor Speedway; and its 758th all-time in NASCAR’s top division – all of which are series-leading feats.
- Four different Chevrolet organizations earned top-10 qualifying efforts for tomorrow’s 500-lap race, with Hyak Motorsports’ Ricky Stenhouse Jr. and the No. 47 Chevrolet team earning their season-best qualifying effort of second to give Chevrolet a sweep of the front-row. Joining their fellow Chevrolet teammates in the top-10 includes Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson in third; Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger in eighth; and Spire Motorsports’ Carson Hocevar and Justin Haley in the ninth and tenth positions, respectively.
Chevrolet’s all-time NASCAR Cup Series statistics at Bristol Motor Speedway:
Wins: 47
Poles: 41
Top-Fives: 222
Top-10s: 464
Chevrolet’s season statistics heading into the ninth race of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Season
Wins: 2
Poles: 5
Top-Fives: 16
Top 10s: 36
Stage Wins: 5
Alex Bowman, No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet – Pole Win Press Conference Quotes
Do we have any clue what we’re about to experience going into tomorrow, or are you and us all as clueless as we were going into last spring?
“I think all signs point to a race like this spring. We started practice with rubber already on the racetrack from the Xfinity cars, and peeled it right up, and sawed the tires right off. So, yeah, confusing why we’re doing it again when we didn’t do it in the fall. I don’t think the weather — obviously it’s really cold today, but I don’t know. It’s going to be warmer tomorrow, so maybe that changes it.
It’s really difficult to say. I think it’s going to be like that, but we’re going to find out together, I think.”
What did you see as the key on your qualifying lap? Was it going out early and having the cooler conditions, or something you found on track?
“Honestly, it really wasn’t the best lap for me. I kind of over-slowed entry to (turn) three, I thought. So, yeah, just probably going out early. Typically, this place trends that the later cars are faster. But, you know, obviously today’s scenario with tires are vastly different than what the racetrack is doing. So, yeah, hard to say. Certainly was watching the clouds there at the end… there were some big clouds coming. The 24 and the 11, guys that tagged the wall at the very end, I knew they were going to be good. So, yeah, happy that it held on.”
Alex, you said it’s a little bit of Deja vu towards last spring. There are a lot of new guys in this field. Jesse Love, for instance, making his first start. What is the conversation to a guy like that who, one, hasn’t been in a Cup car at this level on this track before, and two, has to deal with these tire wear issues?
“Yeah, so I think we’re all much more prepared than we were last spring. We all saw it in practice last spring, and we were like, ah, it won’t be that way. We see that in practice in a lot of places. Martinsville, Dover, a lot of places you cord tires really quickly, and then it goes away in the race.
So, obviously we found out quickly during the race that it wasn’t going to be that way. But, you know, a guy like Jesse that hasn’t run a Cup car before, I feel like the Xfinity car has way more tire fall-off anyway. And you have to be way more mindful of how you build those tires up on those cars. So I think he’ll be fine. I’m sure he watched the spring race, as did everybody last year. So, yeah, I mean I think everybody knows how to approach it now and is going to try to manage the tires the best they can. I was happy with my car and how it held on to tires in practice, so I’m excited for having a shot at it tomorrow.”
Can you give me a sense of what you as a driver have to do in terms of managing the tires for this race, potentially tomorrow, compared to what you did in the car last fall when you didn’t have to worry about it? What more are we going to see you guys do, or can you give us a sense of what more you’re going to have to do inside the car that we can’t see?
“Yeah, I mean honestly, in the spring last year, we rode around at what felt like half speed all day, and I thought I was going to get out of the car and everybody was going to be mad because we didn’t run hard all day. Everybody loved it because there was so much chaos. So in the fall, we just ran hard all day. You run hard every lap, and that’s kind of what Cup racing has become these days… how hard you have to run the car. There are some places you have to manage, but for the most part, you’re ten-tenths every lap. I think tomorrow, it’s really going to depend on when the cautions come out and what they do. Like you look at the end of that spring race, and we didn’t get any cautions for a lot of things that could have been cautions, probably. But at the beginning of the race, we were getting cautions all the time. So there’s two ways to predict that, right? If you save too much and you keep getting all these cautions, you’re just giving away track position. But if you don’t get the cautions and you run too hard, you’re killed on that, too.
So it’ll be interesting to see what the mindset is there and what the reality that we live in is tomorrow, as far as what the tires do with it being a little warmer and where we go. So I think the biggest thing is it’s going to be a ton of learning on the go because as much as we all think we know exactly what it’s going to do from practice, we probably really don’t have a clue, and we’re going to have to learn as we go.”
Can you give me a sense of what do you do between now and tomorrow’s race? I know there’s always homework to do for any driver, but does it change because of the uncertain or what it’s likely to be tomorrow, or does it make it easier because you say it’s learning on the go and you watch some sports on TV or something?
“Yeah, I don’t think they ever let us get away with ‘go watch some sports on TV’, at least for me. I’ve got to try really hard to run remotely good. But yeah, I think for me, probably look at the guys that ran really well in the spring, that finished well, and how they managed the race. I think at the end of the race, we were one of them. But throughout the majority of the race, we saved too much and kept getting those cautions. So it’ll be interesting to see where that winds up. But yeah, probably look at the guys that were good in the spring, and then if there’s not tire wear, you feel like you wasted a couple of hours. But we’ll see.”
When you have to find out about the tire wear during the race, what’s that like? What is it for the fans like racing when you’re having to… do you have to pay more attention? And the guys will be working on the pit box like crazy. But what’s it like for you when it’s like that?
Yeah, for me, it’s fun, I would say. Just something different, right? Different than the normal every week, run ten-tenths every lap. I feel like it gives drivers more opportunity to play a hand in how your day goes, just based on little things you can do.
But sometimes, obviously, you have a car to make those opportunities, and sometimes you don’t. So yeah, I enjoy that side of things. And yeah, I’m just probably as curious as all you guys are. I don’t really have the answer. I’m really curious on how it’s going to go. I’d say everybody’s going to ride around the first run, and if people start falling off a cliff with tire wear, we’ll all know it’s coming. And if the tires don’t wear out, then we’ll just progressively run harder throughout the course of the day.”
Chase Elliott said that last race he felt that it was relentless. He never could let up. When you’re having to learn during, and you like that, is that still going to be pretty relentless, or it’s just a puzzle for you?
“Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t have described it that way. The spring race, to me, was a lot of riding around and chilling out and being sad that the caution came out because you couldn’t save the tires for 40 laps. And then, obviously, it paid off for us in the end.
But yeah, I thought that was more of a mental game than anything, and just trying to know how to load the race car and feel the car to build it in the right direction and to take care of your stuff.”
I talked to Blake Harris and he basically said you’re executing at a very high level right now. He said you spend as much time in the shop as he does, just about. What kind of commitment does it take to excel at the level you guys are performing right now?
“Yeah, that’s Blake (Harris) being nice. He’s in the shop way more than me (laughs). But yeah, I try to hang out with the guys a little bit during the week when they don’t have me doing anything. I get some free time. I live pretty close to the shop, so it’s easy to take one of the dogs over there and go hang out, sit around the setup plate. But yeah, I mean just trying to be successful. Obviously, we saw that in the playoffs last year that we all bought in and worked really hard and found success, and just trying to keep that going. Obviously, it’s been a rough two weeks on the 48 team. Last week, I did not execute at a high level. I drove the race car into the fence at a high rate of speed. But I think just trying to be better every week and work as hard as it takes to continue to run well.”
Some drivers relish having managed tires in these kind of races where it’s on them. Where do you fall on that spectrum?
“I love it. I think it’s great. I think that really comes from when I first came to stock car racing. You know, you ran the same tire for the whole race. The very first race was Greenville Pickens. We rolled around in 24th all day, and then drove through the field like it was nobody’s business at the end, and almost won the thing. I think we ended up second or third.
From then on, I’ve loved tire management. I think it’s fun. It’s a fun mental game to play, and yeah, hopefully you’re on the good side of it. You don’t always get it right, but I do enjoy it.”
What is the art of saving tires?
“I mean, I guess I just drive slower than everybody. I do that most weeks, but on weeks like this, it pays off.
I don’t know. We’ll see tomorrow. I think it’s interesting when guys cord their tires and which tire they cord and how that makes them fall off. It’s interesting how the progression goes. So just trying to probably cord the correct tire; manage your builds and save yourself as long as you can. I wasn’t in the front of the field much in the spring until the end, and those guys — it was kind of funny how one guy would go lead and start to slow down, and another guy would go lead. Nobody wanted to lead and set the pace, so we’ll see how it goes.”
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