Alex Bowman may not have stockpiled wins like his teammates Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, or William Byron, but he has shown quite a consistency in both speed and progression across various types of tracks. His quantum leap into Hendrick Motorsports traces directly back to Dale Earnhardt Jr., who first spotted his potential.<\/p>\n
In 2016, when Junior\u2019s injuries sidelined him for an extended stretch, he pushed Bowman\u2019s name forward to drive his No. 88 HMS machine. Bowman subsequently filled in for Jeff Gordon to secure his No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports seat. During a recent conversation with HOT ROD Pod, Bowman credited Dale Jr. for opening doors at Hendrick Motorsports, while acknowledging his good fortune.<\/p>\n
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His Cup Series tenure dates back to 2014, though his first campaign saw him piloting a No. 23 Toyota for BK Racing, a smaller outfit. The following season brought a shift to Tommy Baldwin Racing. Neither stint produced meaningful results, leaving Bowman searching for traction.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on that watershed moment, Bowman recounted the sequence of events. \u201cI qualified next to Dale at like Richmond, I think, and we were riding around the truck pre-race together, talking about I was trying to get in some good Xfinity cars at the end of that year and have some good races cuz running for small teams was definitely rough.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had some openings at JRM the end of that year that I was able to get into. Kind of took off from there.\u201d The stars aligned<\/a> when Junior\u2019s injury created an unexpected vacancy. \u201cSo obviously, crazy set of circumstances, with him getting hurt. I was driving the Sim for Hendrick at the time. Dale was a big supporter of mine and called me and kind of forced Hendrick to use me\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like, because we all found out so late. But super fortunate to get to fill in for him and then share the car with some guy named Jeff Gordon for the rest of the year, which was wild to me. And somehow I\u2019m still here.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Bowman\u2019s most recent Cup win came at the Chicago Street race in 2024, marking one and a half seasons since he last tasted victory. But across nine campaigns with HMS, he has missed the playoffs just once, in 2023, when a back injury sustained during a sprint car accident forced him to sit out three races.<\/p>\n Last season presented challenges as well. Though winless, the 32-year-old<\/a> recovered a 13th-place finish in the final standings. His best performance last season came in Mexico, where he competed despite nursing injuries from a crash at Michigan International Speedway the previous weekend.<\/p>\n Racing at less than full strength in NASCAR\u2019s inaugural Cup Series event in Mexico City, Bowman clawed from P29 on the grid to P4 at Aut\u00f3dromo Hermanos Rodr\u00edguez, claiming his third top-five result of the year.<\/p>\n Gordon and the entire HMS operation maintain faith in Bowman\u2019s abilities and ceiling. But only the upcoming season will bring answers to their confidence as Bowman adapts to the new Chevrolet body and higher horsepower.<\/p>\n The post Alex Bowman Credits Dale Earnhardt Jr. for Giving Him His First Big Break in NASCAR<\/a> appeared first on The SportsRush<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Bowman may not have stockpiled wins like his teammates Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, or William Byron, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[3931,49,48,4387,17579,14056,4384,634,82,170367,4382],"class_list":["post-404116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-alex-bowman","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase-elliott","tag-chicago-street-race","tag-dale-earnhardt-jr","tag-hendrick-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports","tag-tommy-baldwin-racing","tag-william-byron"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404116","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=404116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}