NASCAR Cup Series: When will Alex Bowman earn his first victory?

Alex Bowman has still not yet won a NASCAR Cup Series race after 96 career starts. When will he break through and earn his first victory?

Alex Bowman, 25, is driving full-time in the NASCAR Cup Series for the third season in his career, but he has not been a full-time driver since the 2015 season when he drove the #7 Tommy Baldwin Racing Chevrolet. Prior to the 2015 season, Bowman drove the #23 BK Racing Toyota full-time in the 2014 season, which is when he made his Cup Series debut.

After driving in 10 races during the second half of the 2016 season as one of the replacement drivers for the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the #88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, Bowman was given the nod to replace Earnhardt Jr. in the 2018 season a few months after it was announced that Earnhardt Jr. would be retiring once the 2017 season came to an end.

Of the five winless drivers who drive for Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing, two of the sport’s top-tier teams, Bowman has driven in the highest amount of Cup Series races without a victory. He has driven in 96 races.

However, Bowman has only driven for Hendrick Motorsports, the only contending team that he has ever driven for, in 25 of those 96 races. Of those 25 races, he has only driven in 15 as a full-time driver, with those 15 races being the 15 races that have been contested so far this season.

The other 71 career Cup Series starts that Bowman made in two full-time seasons in the sport are largely irrelevant aside of the fact that he gained experience in the series. He recorded just four top 20 finished and a best finish of 13th place finish in those 71 races.

Even with all of that in mind, Bowman may not be too close to earning his first career Cup Series victory even though he would currently be in the playoffs if they began today, as he sits in 15th place in the championship standings.

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So far this season, Bowman has four top 10 finishes and one top five finish. That one top five finish was a fifth place finish at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, and it was the first top five finish that he has earned in his Cup Series career.

Bowman is a very consistent driver, as his average starting position and his average finishing position through 15 races so far this season are 15.3 and 15.9, respectively. This consistency may very well be enough to get him into the playoffs seeing as how only six different drivers have won a race so far this season and only one of them, Austin Dillon, currently sits below him the the championship standings.

However, Bowman will need to do far more than just continue his consistency in order to earn his first career Cup Series victory, especially since he has just seven career top 10 finishes and one career top 10 finish in 96 starts. Even including only his 25 starts as a Hendrick Motorsports driver, which is the span during which all of these finishes have occurred, those statistics are still nothing special.

If Hendrick Motorsports can continue to improve throughout the rest of the season, as they have struggled to start the season, Bowman may have a chance to end 2018 with a victory. However, the odds that the team will improve to the point where that is a likelihood are extremely small at this point.

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Will Alex Bowman earn his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory before the 2018 season comes to an end in mid-November? If not, when will he add his name to the growing list of drivers who have won at least one race in the Cup Series?