Alex Bowman prepares for the Crayon 301 in New Hampshire (Photo: Josh Jones | The Podium Finish)
LOUDON, N.H. – Alex Bowman will start the Crayon 301 Monday afternoon in the 25th position after qualifying on Saturday.
This weekend at New Hampshire has started off far from perfect for Alex Bowman, who ran 31st quickest in practice and failed to advance out of Group A qualifying.
“[The car felt] terrible,” Bowman said. “Yeah, we just unloaded way too loose and [are] kind of trying to play catch up from there. Definitely, I think all four [Hendrick] cars struggled in practice and us being the Group A with early draw for qualifying certainly hurt, we started last last week and had a good day, so hopefully we just go to the front and go from there.”
“It’s a really difficult place to pass,” Bowman added. “These cars on short tracks in general are difficult. I do feel like we have potential in our race car, we just missed the balance there for qualifying, so as bad as we were in practice, I know we can do a lot better tomorrow, or one day.”
Historically, Bowman has struggled to have consistent success at New Hampshire, recording just three top-ten finishes at the track since 2014 spanning across both the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series.
Since returning from a fractured vertebra in a sprint car crash, Bowman has failed to record a top-10 finish. In fact, his last top 10 came at Richmond Raceway in April, the seventh race of the season.
Most recently, Bowman finished 26th at Atlanta Motor Speedway but caught a bad break with a terminal mechanical failure the week before at the Chicago Street Course.
“We’ve had a couple weeks where stuff just happens, obviously the mechanical failure at Chicago hurt as well, so a lot of different things have happened,” Bowman said. “But yeah, just need to get pointed back in the right direction. I don’t know that this is the best place for me to do that, but we’ll make the most of it.”
Over the last four weeks, Bowman has dropped from 16th to 22nd in points and sits 44 behind the cutline with seven races remaining in the regular season. While the 30-year-old is taking it one week at a time, Bowman is also looking forward to tracks he is more comfortable at, including Pocono Raceway next week.
“I think going to places we know we’re strong at is certainly a positive for us,” Bowman said. “I feel like we’re as capable as anybody, maybe not myself here, but at least my teammates were bad in practice too. We go to a lot of places for us coming up and there’s no reason we can’t go and perform.”
Before the anticipated brighter races ahead for Bowman and the No. 48 team, he will have to face New Hampshire on Monday at 12:00 pm ET on USA Network, MRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
