NASCAR’s Alex Bowman moves on from playoff penalty and plans to use it as motivation in ’25

Alex Bowman is over the sting of last season, the one that prompted him to throw his phone into his swimming pool amid disgust and disappointment.

The NASCAR driver was disqualified from a playoff race because his No. 48 Chevrolet failed to meet minimum weight, resulting in a loss of points that ended his season a month before the championship finale.

It ruined what Bowman thought was shaping up to be a championship-contending run.

“I’d say I was mad for about a day and then it was just time to get back to work,” Bowman said.

Now, he’s hoping to use that setback as motivation for 2025. The Cup Series officially begins with the Daytona 500 on Feb. 16.

“We ended the season really strong,” Bowman told The Associated Press. “We had a really good playoff run. It took us too long to find that consistent speed. But we found it. If we can just start there and have that be our baseline, we can have a really strong year. I’m excited to get rolling.”

Bowman notched five top-10 finishes in the series’ 10 playoff events, solid enough to give his Hendrick Motorsports team a chance to make the finale at Phoenix Raceway. That penalty at Charlotte Motor Speedway, however, changed everything.

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Bowman crossed the finish line in 18th-place at the Roval, high enough to eliminate Team Penske’s Joey Logano from the playoff field by four points.

But Bowman’s car failed a post-race inspection, dropping him to 38th in the race and advancing Logano into the next round. Hendrick Motorsports called Bowman’s weight issue unintentional and avoidable.

“It wasn’t anything that I had any control over,” Bowman said. “There was nothing anybody could do about it. There’s no way to change it. All we really could do was move on and keep digging. It would have been nice to not have that happen, obviously.”

Bowman was back home by the time the penalty got handed down. He learned about it while scrolling social media and responded by angrily throwing his phone into his pool.

Adding insult to misery, Logano ended up winning the championship four weeks later.

“From different perspectives, it probably makes it worse,” Bowman said. “I hate that we gave them that opportunity, but we did, and they obviously capitalized on it and did what they needed to do.

“Props to them for being able to shake off what they had going on and go win a championship that way. That was a big achievement for them.”

It could end up being a catalyst for Bowman, who has two wins over the last three seasons. Bowman has two years remaining on his Hendrick contract — plenty of time to turn things around. But he’ll need to get to victory lane more often to make it happen.

He’s won at least one race in five of the last six seasons, although he’s slipped significantly since winning a career-high four times in 2021.

“Winning multiple races is a big goal of ours,” he said. “And we believe we can. The end of the year proved we can run as well as anybody. We just need to piece that together throughout the course of the whole season.”

Daytona could be his launching spot.

Bowman started “The Great American Race” from the front row in four consecutive years (2020-23), including two poles, and was seventh on the grid last year. Although he struggled earlier in his career on superspeedways, Bowman was second last year and fifth in 2023.

Neither was quite cause for celebration. But they didn’t cause Bowman to chuck his phone, either.

“Qualifying means a lot to Mr. Hendrick and everybody in the engine shop and the chassis shop, everybody that puts the cars together. It’s kind of their time to shine,” Bowman said. “But winning the 500 means a little bit more than that. I would take the win over the pole.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing