Alex Bowman grits through pain to finish fourth in Mexico
MEXICO CITY — Alex Bowman winced as he lowered his body into a seat in the drivers meeting Sunday, the pain in his right lower back and leg a result of his high-speed head-on crash the previous week in Michigan.
He said on Saturday that it was painful sitting in his car. Just sitting in a regular padded folding chair Sunday proved as difficult.
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Yet, here he was about to run 100 laps around the 15-turn, 2.42-mile Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez course from the 29th starting spot. HIs journey lasted 3 hours and 14 minutes.
When it ended, he had finished fourth.
"Running well probably made it easier than it could have been,' Bowman told Prime after the race. 'Just proud of the whole team. I put us behind this week. In full transparency, I couldn't walk on Wednesday, so I missed all my sim stuff, all my meetings. Just trying to get back going.
'I had a lot of help from a lot of people to fix whatever the hell was going on, and thankfully enough, I was able to run all the laps this weekend.'
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The Trackhouse Racing driver qualifies for the 2025 playoffs with his second career victory.
Crew chief Blake Harris marveled at what Bowman accomplished.
'To be honest, we didn't know … Wednesday night for sure that he was going to be on the plane with us Thursday,' Harris said. 'I thought his recovery was going well and Wednesday me and another guy had to basically carry him because he got to a point where he almost couldn't walk.
'It's tough for me because I look at Michigan, it doesn't matter what happens with our team, I feel responsible for it. In my opinion … if the car is more comfortable at Michigan, we're not in the 20s (in the running order) and we don't get crashed.'
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NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps told drivers before the race: 'Together, we are doing something that will be remembered in the history of our great sport.'
Bowman said he spent most of his time in Mexico in his hotel bed recovering. His team had Anthony Alfredo on standby to relieve Bowman. Alfredo wasn't needed.
Bowman fought through the injury for just his third top-10 finish in the last 10 races.
A key moment in the race came when Harris pitted Bowman on Lap 62 from sixth place. Bowman was the second car to come to pit road at the start of that green-flag cycle. Christopher Bell, who went on to finish second started the cycle a lap earlier.
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Harris said that strategy started with Bowman's pit stop on Lap 17. The pit crew took off the wet-weather tires and put on slicks (meant for dry conditions).
Harris admits that they probably put the slicks on too early but the stop came at their last chance to pit before the end of the stage at Lap 20 since there are no pit stops allowed in the last two laps of either the first or second stage. There was a benefit to the move.
'That gave us the first jump to track position,' Harris said. 'Then at that point, we knew a lot of guys thought a bunch of rain was coming, so we knew a lot of guys would pit and we stayed out. They pitted before (the end of) stage two, thinking they could go to the rain. We thought the rain was going to be like right at the time we were out of fuel.
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'We started to get some of those sprinkles right as we were starting to run out of fuel.'
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The Trackhouse Racing driver turned in a dominant performance for his second career Cup victory.
That's why Bowman pitted at Lap 62.
When a caution came out for Carson Hocevar's stalled car at Lap 66, only part of the field had pitted. Those that had, moved to the front of the field. Those that had not — including leader Ty Gibbs — restarted deeper in the field after their pit stop.
Bowman restarted third and went on to score a top-five finish.
'It feels good to get this No. 48 Ally Chevrolet team a run that they deserve,' Bowman said. 'We've had a lot of fast race cars and just had days that haven't gone our way. We've had issues and there's been times that I've crashed the car, so to get them a good run after everything this week and how hard they've had to work is great.'
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