{"id":137848,"date":"2025-09-12T05:25:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T05:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/137848\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T05:25:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T05:25:08","slug":"nascar-insiders-react-to-alex-bowman-disaster-day-at-gateway-must-win-bristol-playoff-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/137848\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR insiders react to Alex Bowman disaster day at Gateway, must-win Bristol playoff race"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anything that can go wrong, has gone wrong for Alex Bowman in the NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series playoffs. The common theme at both Darlington and Gateway was pit road mistakes. <\/p>\n

He called a P31 run at Darlington a \u201csh*tty, unacceptable day on all fronts.\u201d Pit road was an issue for Bowman in that one; at one point, they had a 40-second pit stop. He followed that up with a P26 effort at Gateway. Once again, pit road was a problem for the No. 48 team. He heads into Saturday\u2019s Round of 16 finale at Bristol -35 below the cutline, facing what Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic called a \u201cmust-win position.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBowman\u2019s in a must-win position. Too many guys to hop, too many things have to happen. He\u2019s in a must-win position,\u201d Bianchi said on The Teardown<\/a> podcast. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think you can trust Alex Bowman and that team to have a complete race where they\u2019re going to go out and win. \u2026 If you\u2019re a fan of Alex Bowman and your driver is making a pit stop, do you have any confidence whatsoever that your driver is going to get off pit road without an incident? No.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex Bowman, No. 48 make major changes ahead of Bristol<\/p>\n

With Bowman\u2019s championship hopes on life support, Hendrick Motorsports is going with an all hands on deck approach to get the No. 48 team into the next round.\u00a0Hendrick is\u00a0swapping<\/a>\u00a0most of the Spire Motorsports No. 77 team pit crew over to the No. 48 team for Bristol.<\/p>\n

The No. 77 pit crew was the fastest Hendrick-trained pit crew at Gateway, and third fastest overall. Bowman\u2019s No. 48 pit crew was 28th. Spire leases pit crews from Hendrick, which has final say on where pit crew members are placed.<\/p>\n

Bowman and the No. 48 team will hope for better results on pit road at Bristol. Anything short of a win won\u2019t erase what has been a disastrous two weeks. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis round is all about being mistake free \u2014 and really the playoffs are \u2014 but really this round especially because of the number of drivers that are in,\u201d Bianchi said. \u201cIt\u2019s about not making mistakes. It\u2019s about letting your competition take a shotgun to their foot and blow it off and you\u2019re just like, cool, dude, have a good day, peace out. Instead, the 48 team has taken multiple shotguns to their feet, and you can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s just about surviving and advancing and they\u2019re not surviving and they\u2019re not going to advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Gluck of The Athletic agreed with Bianchi that Bowman needs to win to advance to the Round of 12. He isn\u2019t optimistic about his chances.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo think you\u2019re going to go to the Bristol Night Race and win is quite the long shot,\u201d Gluck said. \u201cIs it impossible? No, but it\u2019s going to be pretty tough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anything that can go wrong, has gone wrong for Alex Bowman in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-137848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nascar","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}