Austin Dillon<\/a> was the third driver to suffer tire failure and was trapped three laps down for most of the race and needing several above him to have issues. That left Alex Bowman<\/a> as the only candidate to upend the expected result.<\/p>\n Cindric and Elliott spend time on the hot seat Chase Elliott, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n Photo by: Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Now, Austin Cindric<\/a> and Chase Elliott<\/a> made it dramatic but their pre-race cushion was too much to be overcome. Cindric suffered a right front fire, similar to Berry<\/a>, but was able to get it put out and returned to the track four laps down. Elliott was involved a crash and found himself at risk of being the last driver in on points<\/a> until Cindric had his issue.<\/p>\n This was an important subplot because Bowman was threatening to win the race over the final stint and was left out front on old tires. Restarts bit him all night.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought our car, when we had some green-flag running, was really good,\u201d Bowman said. \u201cIt just cycled really poorly for restarts. I would drive off into Turn 1 and just hope to make the corner. For whatever reason, it just wouldn\u2019t take off.<\/p>\n \u201cThen after five laps or so, go again. I couldn\u2019t figure it out if it was something that I was doing, not cleaning the tires off enough, but I felt like I was cleaning the tires off too much at some point. I don\u2019t really know what we lacked there.\u201d<\/p>\n For Cindric, it could have been worse than what it was because the smoke nearly forced him out of the car and into what could have been a more precarious points position. He could have lost up to five more points and Bowman would have advanced instead.<\/p>\n \u201cI was going to wait till I saw a color other than smokey gray,\u201d Cindric said. \u201cI don\u2019t think the stress was there. I think everyone was pretty well prepared with the transfer of information once I got back out on track and with a scuff right-front tire, old-as-hell left-side tires and an old right-rear tire.<\/p>\n \u201cI got a handle on the car and got all the fire-extinguisher stuff burned off the tires and dripping everywhere, and was able to finish the race. Hectic, and I\u2019m sure it was crazy for a little while on paper.\u201d<\/p>\n Bowman fails to win his way into the next round Alex Bowman, Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet<\/p>\n Photo by: Jeffrey Vest \/ Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n Bowman, who is still winless on the season, now turns his attention to just winning a race and building momentum for next season even if circumstances made it closer than it ever appeared likely.<\/p>\n \u201cA top 10 with stage points and a solid day \u2014 the guys on pit road did a really good job,\u201d said Bowman about the crew he inherited from the Spire Motorsports No. 77 this week. \u201cI\u2019m sure the guys on the 77 did a good job, too. Those guys are like family, so it\u2019s been a rough week. Just got to keep digging, right? There\u2019s a lot of points we can still score. We can still finish way better than wherever we\u2019re at in points right now.\u201d<\/p>\n But instead, it\u2019s Cindric who will now advance into the Round of 12.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone kept their cool,\u201d Cindric said. \u201cCredit to all the guys from the top down, transferring information, being prepared, not getting any penalties for going over the wall. I mean everything that went on there and still being able to come out and only lose a handful of laps and be in the position we needed to. Whenever we do great things, we do it as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n Read Also:<\/p>\n In this article<\/p>\n Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were moments when the status quo seemed under threat, but at the end of a chaotic Bristol…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[3931,21621,10226,76583,71995,29779,49,48,4387,58721,634,3628,9706,82],"class_list":["post-142852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-alex-bowman","tag-austin-cindric","tag-austin-dillon","tag-bristol-dramatics-threaten-nascar-playoff-standings","tag-bristol-ii","tag-bristol-motor-speedway","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase-elliott","tag-josh-berry","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-cup","tag-shane-van-gisbergen","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142852","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=142852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n ![\"Chase](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757836148_330_chase-elliott-hendrick-motorsp.jpg\")
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\n ![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1757836149_464_alex-bowman-hendrick-motorspor.jpg\")
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