Alex Bowman has turned a corner in his NASCAR Cup Series career, and it didn’t just happen with his first career victory at Chicagoland Speedway.
After 133 starts without reaching victory lane, including 62 driving for Hendrick Motorsports, Alex Bowman become the newest first-time winner in the NASCAR Cup Series by winning this past Sunday’s Camping World 400 at Chicagoland Speedway.
The 26-year-old Tucson, Arizona has clearly turned a corner.
The 2018 season was Bowman’s first season as a full-time driver for Hendrick Motorsports after he drove for the team in 10 races throughout he 2016 season as one of the replacements for the injured Dale Earnhardt Jr. He nearly won the November race at ISM Raceway in 2016 by dominating it, as he led 194 of its 324 laps, but he had to settle for sixth place.
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In the 2018 season, he worked his way into the playoffs and ended up advancing to the round of 12, but his season was not particularly impressive. While he did advance to the round of 12, he ended up finishing in 16th place in the championship standings with just three top five finishes, 11 top 10 finishes and a career-high finish of third in the July race at Pocono Raceway. His average finishing position was 17.00.
Bowman had, for lack of a better word, a terrible start to the 2019 season, as he finished no higher than 11th place in the season’s first nine races, and his average finishing position was a lackluster 18.33, two marks that were by far the worst among those of the four Hendrick Motorsports drivers.
Rarely can you say that something changes in a superspeedway race given how much of a “wild card” race those races can be, but for Bowman, this is exactly what happened.
Bowman topped his career-high finish of third place by finishing in second in the season’s 10th race at Talladega Superspeedway in late April behind teammate Chase Elliott. He followed up this result with another career-high second place result in the following race at Dover International Speedway.
Bowman’s momentum continued in the next race at Kansas Speedway, which he appeared poised to win, but he ultimately had to settle for a career-high second place again to become the first driver in Cup Series history to finish in second in three consecutive races before securing his first career victory.
Additionally, in a matter of 14 days, he recorded as many top five finishes as he previously had in 126 starts. Over the next four races, Bowman lost a little bit of this momentum, but he stayed consistent. While he never finished higher than seventh place, he never finished lower than 15th.
Then at Chicagoland Speedway, a four-turn, 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval like Kansas Speedway, he finally broke through, leading 88 of the race’s 267 laps, including 40 of the last 42, and holding off Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kyle Larson by just 0.546 seconds to take the checkered flag for the first time in his Cup Series career.
Bowman has, in fact, turned a corner, but he didn’t just turn it this past Sunday by winning this race in Joliet, Illinois. His first career victory simply solidified this, as it had been coming for quite some time, particularly over the last few months.
No driver has been better than Bowman over the last eight races. With a series-high four top two finishes and a series-high average finishing position of 6.63, he is at the point where he can compete with anybody at pretty much any track.
With his first career NASCAR Cup Series victory behind him, what is Alex Bowman capable of achieving throughout his career? How many more races will he win throughout the final 19 races of the 36-race 2019 season? Given his recent pace and consistency, now that he has gotten the monkey off of his back with a win, can he make a run at this year’s championship?