NASCAR Cup Series

Alex Bowman trying to find his way as NASCAR playoffs head to Richmond

Updated Sep. 9, 2021 5:24 p.m. ET

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

After finishing a miserable evening at Darlington Raceway, Alex Bowman saw a tow truck heading toward him Sunday night as he conducted post-race interviews following the NASCAR Cup Series playoff opener.

"If I get run over, my night might get better," he quipped.

He then added: "You might get run over, too, if you’re near me."

For those who worry that Bowman might be jaded after a frustrating Darlington, don’t sweat it too much. Bowman has a tendency to not sugarcoat things. He is definitely a glass-half-empty guy when frustrated.

And for the record, he tried to be optimistic moments later:

"Hopefully I make it home safe," he said. "No tickets – just walk in the door, dogs will be happy to see me, week resets, and everything is good."

Bowman got home fine, and he will try to rebound, as he is used to doing in the NASCAR playoffs. He has had three previous playoff appearances and advanced out of the first round each time. He advanced to the third round last year.

He should have the experience to push Darlington — a race in which he wrecked the car early, had radio issues, had engines issues and finished 26th — aside. He enters the second race of the three-race playoff round tied with Tyler Reddick for the final spot at the current cutoff.

The four drivers who are winless in the round and lowest in points will be eliminated following next week’s race at Bristol.

The fact that he is at the cutline could be a little bit of solace to Bowman, who won at Richmond earlier this year, considering how much he struggled at Darlington and the fact that he could have found himself in a deeper hole.

"We had a really fantastic race car at Richmond, and I’m excited to go back there," Bowman said. "I don’t think I’ve ever said I’m excited to go to Richmond before."

You see – there’s a little positivity.

"I’m definitely trying to keep the team pumped up, but at the same time, I think everybody on the team knows how strong we can be each and every place we go," he said. "We just had a bad day.

"Going forward, to a place like Richmond, where we won in the spring, I think everybody is pretty positive that we can go there and have success and be strong."

Bowman has won twice since that race at Richmond; he won at Dover in May and Pocono in June. But since that Pocono victory, he has just one top-5 and four top-10 finishes. He has just one top-10 in the five races since the two-week break that coincided with the Olympics.

"This sport comes and goes, and it’s got ups and downs," Bowman said. "When you’re consistently running well, you can do no wrong, and you’re always fast. Then you fall off and try to get it back. ... I’m confident we can go to Richmond and have a good day.

"We struggled at Darlington in the spring quite a bit, and Dover was the race after that, and we went and won. I’m not worried about where we’re at. I’m not worried about how many top-10s we have since the Olympic break."

Early in his career, Bowman might have stressed and analyzed the standings for hours. The 28-year-old Bowman, who signed a two-year contract extension with Hendrick Motorsports earlier this year, has learned that does him no good.

He will try to take the approach that got him to the semifinal round last year.

"You can stare at the points sheet and know exactly how many points you have to beat so-and-so by, but it doesn’t help you any," he said. "Then you’re just more stressed out about situations you can’t control.

"I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to go drive the race car as fast as you can. ... I did a really poor job on Sunday night, and I’ve got two weeks to make up for it. I’ve just got to go maximize both races.

"Last year during the playoffs, I wasn’t looking at points. I wasn’t worried about it."

Looking ahead, he knows he was strong at Richmond in the spring. But teams make improvements throughout the year. There have been 18 races since that event.

What worked well then, and will it work well Saturday night?

"I hope so because I haven’t ever had anything work at Richmond before the spring," Bowman said. "So that’s all I’ve got that works."

You see – Mr. Positive.

"I feel like I drive that place incorrectly to a point, and I ask some different things out of the race car that kind of a lot of the normal guys that grew up racing stock cars on short tracks don’t do," said Bowman, whose roots are in sprint-car racing.

"So going there has always been tough for me. I think [crew chief] Greg [Ives] finally hit on something that worked really well for me. So hopefully we can get it to work again. You never know until you get there, and without practice, it’s hard to say. But I’m pretty confident that we’ll have another great race car this weekend."

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What to watch for

Nine playoff drivers have previously won at Richmond, including Kyle Busch, who has six Cup victories at the track.

Denny Hamlin and Kevin Harvick have three wins apiece, while Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski, Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. have two each. Kyle Larson and, of course, Bowman each have one.

Hamlin led 207 of the 400 laps at Richmond in the spring before Bowman’s short-run setup for the final dozen laps allowed him to pass Hamlin with 10 laps remaining.

Truex led 107 laps in that race until a speeding penalty forced him to rally to finish fifth. He has led at least 100 laps in seven of the past nine Richmond races and more than 150 laps in four of those.

Logano was third in the spring, while Christopher Bell was fourth — look for them to be factors. Bell also has three Xfinity victories at Richmond.

While Larson did win the September 2017 race at the track, that is one of only two career top-5s he has in Cup at Richmond.

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Thinking out loud

Well, sometimes my initial thoughts don’t pan out. As avid readers know, I predicted that Kyle Busch wouldn’t be penalized for the way he drove into the garage area at Darlington.

NASCAR decided to penalize him $50,000, a fine that he certainly can afford and that doesn’t impact him in the playoffs. My guess is that NASCAR thought it could get his attention with this fine enough to annoy him and remind him to be careful — but didn’t penalize points because it thought that would have been too steep a penalty for the violation.

Maybe if NASCAR had practice, it would do the ol’ call-the-driver-to-the-hauler right before practice and have Busch sit in the hauler for 10 minutes of practice to think about his actions the previous week. With no practice, NASCAR obviously needed another way to get its message across.

NASCAR needs to take a bit of ownership in the situation and reevaluate the number of officials it places at the garage entrance to help alleviate potentially dangerous situations. It might also want to reevaluate those cones, which were there to encourage drivers to swing wide when entering the garage so their transponder would register crossing the timing line on pit road used for the start-finish line when cars are on pit road (and therefore score them for that lap).

The cones gave the impression that cars shouldn’t enter that area, yet that was the only garage entrance. People should have been constantly expecting and looking for cars coming in.

Next Up: Next Gen

NASCAR conducted a two-day Next Gen test at Daytona, a test that was cut a little bit short because of rain. The test was closed to the public, but those at the track indicated that the teams tried several aero packages to see what worked best in the draft. While they made progress after initial runs weren’t as productive as hoped, there is still some work to do to get the cars optimized in the draft.

The main issue with the car continues to be the heat generated inside and finding the balance with the steering such that the cars are difficult to drive but drivers still feel in control of the car.

NASCAR says it plans to return in January with 25 or more cars to get the drafting package right for the Daytona 500.

"We obviously have a list of things to work on coming out of here," NASCAR Senior Vice President John Probst said. "We have to work on the heat in the car.

"We have some ideas there. We used the afternoon [Wednesday] to try some big swings at things and found some directions to go, so I feel like we made some really big gains there."

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They said it

"Made way too many mistakes. That’s what you deserve when you make that many mistakes." — Chase Elliott after a crash ended his day early at Darlington

Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!