DAYTONA BEACH, Fla.—Alex Bowman broke his streak of six consecutive front row starts for the Daytona 500.
Maybe that was for the best.
After starting seventh for the Great American Race on Monday afternoon, the driver of the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet claomed a career-best second-place result behind teammate and race winner William Byron.
“Yeah, I think there’s a little bit of a correlation there, but maybe that’s just me,” Bowman said with a laugh. “I think it’s fun to come down here and get to race the Duel and have cars that drive really well. I think we really focused on that. I think we wanted to qualify better than we did, but it’s nice to have a car that drives really well.”
While HMS drivers Byron and Chase Elliott finished 1-2 in the 2020 summer race at Daytona, two Hendrick drivers haven’t scored the top two spots in the 500 since Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr., completed the feat in 2013.
“We didn’t really work together on that last run, but the run before that, obviously pushed the 24 a lot,” Bowman said. “Really close, but really proud of everybody at HMS. It was a great day for us.”
Early in the race, Elliott appeared to have the fastest Hendrick Chevrolet. After starting fifth, he led twice for 13 laps before winning the first stage on Lap 65. Kyle Larson, Ross Chastain, Bowman and Byron rounded out the top five.
The Fords were dominant in the second stage, with Kyle Busch and Larson making appearances at the point before defending Cup champion Ryan Blaney collected the Stage 2 win on Lap 131. Bowman dropped to 18th in the second stage after pitting 15 laps earlier.
The final 63 laps appeared to be coming down to a battle between the Fords and Chevrolets when a 23-melee erupted on the backstretch with eight laps remaining. Byron was running fourth with Bowman behind. The No. 24 Chevy became unsettled after a push fom Bowman and hooked the right rear of Brad Keselowski’s Ford. Keselowski, who was running second at the time, spun into his former Penske teammate Joey Logano and collected Blaney at the wall.
Chastain, who was leading at the time, was able to drive off as were Bowman and Byron. When the race restarted with four laps remaining, Byron had the lead followed, by Chastain and Bowman. Austin Cindric, Corey LaJoie and AJ Allmendinger moved into the top five coming to the white flag. Chastain dived to the inside of Cindric’s Ford but failed to clear him, and the contact sent both cars sideways at the line.
Bowman went high, Byron took the low lane and NASCAR determined that the No. 24 had the lead at the moment of caution after taking the white flag.
“Things worked out for us, for sure,” Bowman said. “This race is so much about saving fuel and riding around. At the beginning, we were running like 51-second laps. That’s like two seconds slower than we qualified.
“So it’s become interesting to see how the strategy works out and can be a bit frustrating as a race car driver, but really smart people put us in the position we needed to be to capitalize at the end, and we were able to have two Hendrick cars up there.”
Certainly, Bowman would have hoped the positions were reversed. Yet after coming off of a winless season where he missed three races and the NASCAR Cup Playoffs, 2024 is off to a pretty good start.
“It was good,” Bowman said. “It’s better than the alternative. You know, it’s just one race. We just got to keep plugging away at it.”
Follow Lee Spencer on Twitter @CandiceSpencer or email her at: [email protected].
