Bowman leaves Dover happy after another strong run

Alex Bowman didn’t win Sunday at Dover Motor Speedway, but he still had a day he expected by finishing near the top of the leaderboard.

Bowman finished third behind Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Denny Hamlin and Chase Briscoe. The Hendrick Motorsports driver chose the bottom for the final restart in overtime and was able to clear his teammate, Kyle Larson, for the position.

“From where I was at (in the second row), I needed them to get together,” Bowman said of the Joe Gibbs Racing duo. “Honestly, I was pretty surprised to clear [Larson] there. Bottom lane restarts here are tough. Our car wraps the bottom really well; there are some things I do that I look for here, and maybe it paid off that last restart. It’s hard to say until we go back and watch it.

“I was surprised to get to third, and from then on, when they’re two wide, there is no hole. You just need one to mess up and get them both going somewhere that they don’t want to go and sneak by, but that didn’t happen.”

Bowman makes no bones about looking forward to Dover each season. Statistically, it might be his best.

He's finished eighth or better in seven of his last eight Dover races, including a 2021 victory. Even more impressive, of those top-10 finishes, six of them were inside the top five. What led to the change? Bowman’s former Hendrick Motorsports teammate, Jimmie Johnson.

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“I was pretty terrible here in ’18, and we came back in ’19, sucked in practice, had a conversation with Jimmie, and we’ve been top five pretty much every race since then,” Bowman said. “Obviously, we wanted to win, but I think we knew we were going to be good here, just not quite good enough.”  

Bowman pushed to a 63-point advantage on the playoff grid cutline with Sunday's performance.

“It’s big, for sure,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever finished a race on the oval at Indianapolis, so at least we had a good day today, and hopefully next week we can have a solid day and finish. Blake’s (Harris, crew chief) going to have a fast hot rod for me, and a big points buffer is good. It’s not good enough, but it’s definitely headed back in the right direction.”

Sunday was Bowman’s third top-10 finish in the last four races. He has climbed to ninth in the overall championship standings.

“Honestly, stuff got bad there for a bit, but there was a lot of stuff out of our control, and then I crashed for a couple of weeks,” he said. “Other than that, we’ve been really good, so I think the team is doing a really good job. If we came here and struggled, I would be like, ‘What are we doing?’

“This my favorite racetrack. Blake knows exactly what I need to be successful here. Hendrick cars are unbelievable here. It’s a good showing for us, but we have to keep digging.”